Stronger
by Mess
Summary: The Straw Hat Pirates are off to Skypeia... but the Marines left in Albasta have got their own problems, and Tashigi has very nearly reached the end of her rope. A Marine-fic. NOTE: rating may change to R with next chapter.
1. Night Out

**Stronger  
**prologue - for starters

  
It was a lovely night, really. One of the loveliest that the kingdom of Albasta had seen in years. The rains had come, and gone, and left in their wake a sense of relief so palpable she could _taste_ it, even over the harsh salt tang of the dockside air. The grime of a thousand and one sandswept nights had been washed away, just like that. The blistering heat and fled, tail-between-legs, for greener pastures. All that was left were gentle tradewinds and a killer sunset and the unshakable feeling that she should be pulling a deck chair onto the bow and drinking lemonade, just to honour the spirit of the moment.

Instead, Tashigi settled for leaning on the starboard looking pensive. Her glasses were off. The mainland looked prettier with the details blurred out. 

There'd been a time, just after Tashigi had been chosen to serve under the legendary White Hunter, when she would have sold her sword for a night like this. It should have been an honour, working for the likes of Captain Smoker. Should have been. And it was, of course, but not in the way they'd intended. It hadn't taken her long to figure out that Headquarters had given him some skinny little twig of a girl freshly out of the enlisted ranks as his junior officer because they fully expected him to break her. It wasn't about her skills, it was about the fact that they didn't want to waste their _real _potential on a man who went through assistants like tissue paper. So she'd decided that she'd show those men exactly what a skinny little twig of a girl could do. And sitting back, with a glass of lemonade... when she'd been working to keep up with him, without stumbling and sending things scattering all to hell like she usually did, it had seemed like an impossible luxury. 

Now, zeitgeist or no, it just seemed boring. After the Alubarna battle and her embarrassing breakdown he'd given her a couple of days off, and it seemed _boring_. 

When had she become spoiled for relaxation? Why hadn't she noticed it, before now? Was it the Grandline? Captain Smoker? That thrice-damned Roronoa Zoro? 

... if she started training, the midshipmen would probably think that she was insane. And they already had that problem with Smoker and his... 'direct' command policies. The enlisted men had to be able to count on her to be sensible. Dammit. 

"You need anything, Lieutenant?" Jenkins asked her, climbing down from aft rigging. 

Lieutenant. _Hunh_. She'd gotten her reward for sticking it out with Captain Smoker after all. Victory tasted like saltwater, and ashes. 

"No, I'm fine," Tashigi tried not to snap at the man. He wasn't mocking her. It wasn't his fault. "Does the Captain have anything that needs doing before the ceremony tomorrow? I think he'd like to pull out of port as soon as possible."

Smoker had told the crew that if anyone called him Commodore "like those shitheads at Headquarters" he'd rip their lungs out and use them to swab the decks. Tashigi knew that she could order them to do the same for her, and get them to call her Sergeant-Major again, but that wouldn't make any difference to what the rest of the Marines. The label of her promotion was her cross to bear, for failing in to enforce her own justice in Alubarna. Every time she heard it, it would remind her that she had to become stronger and live up to the name. 

"Uh, no?" Maybe she _should_ start training, after all. Jenkins was looking at her like she was insane anyways. "You have the night off, ma'am! It's so great out, and we're in port, too... you're really lucky."

He probably thought that she'd hit her head or something in Alubarna. Tashigi was unfortunately... accident-prone. 

"Besides, Captain Smoker left to go see Captain Hina an hour ago, while you were still sleeping." Jenkins, an incurable gossip, looked about as pleased to get hold of this information as a starving man with a bowl of rice. Their ship had become pretty boring for the gossips, after they'd spent the first couple of weeks at sea puzzling through who was buggering who in the aft grain storage cabin.

"I hear," Jenkins was excited about his new toy, and tried to look like he was confiding some great secret in her. That meant that half the ship probably already knew, "the Captain and Madame Hina are _playing cards_."

"Apparently," he coughed, "they '_played cards_' in officer training school. If you know what I mean. And I think you do. If you know what I _mean_. The guys from C-deck have a pool going on whether or not he comes back to the ship tonight."

Jenkins was clearly impressed by this turn of events. 

"I'm sure Captain Smoker will have a good time reminiscing with his old friend," Tashigi said dryly, secretly wishing that there were some way she could pour lye directly into her skull, so that she could forever burn the image from her mind of the Captain and... with... doing... AUGH. If her superior officer had... 'needs'... Tashigi definitely didn't need to know about it, even if Captain Hina was a good Marine and respectable person. It was like... like... when mom's old boyfriends had stayed the evenings over. There were places she did not need to go. "And I don't want to hear about you betting on the personal lives of your superior officers again, Private Jenkins. _Ever_."

She knew that he still would, of course. The men had to occupy their time with something on the high seas, besides backbreaking labor.

"Sure thing, ma'am," Jenkins ran off. Maybe she'd snapped more than she'd intended. 

When had she become so... authoritative? How had that happened? Tashigi was supposed to be the goofy kid that tripped over her own shoes and blushed tomato-red at the mere mention of... she was NOT revisiting that image. This was almost as bad as that time she'd gone looking for an extra slide ruler in the hull and come upon... no, she wasn't revisiting THAT image either. 

Maybe it was good that they were stuck in Nanohana waiting to be humiliated by Headquarters. The persistent itch that tugged at her to get back onto the seaways and after Roronoa-bloody-Zoro instead of lounging around was, for once, almost equaled by the sudden urge to get off of the damn boat RIGHT NOW. 

"I'm going into town for a walk," she told Private Dvorak as she jumped down from the railing to the docks. "If Captain Smoker comes looking for me, you can tell him I'll be back in about an hour."

At the mention of Captain Smoker, Private Dvorak let out a decidedly unmanly snicker, "Can do, ma'am."

Tashigi pushed the bridge of her glasses up, shuddered a little, and then left. 

***

Smoker was happy that the weather was good. He felt like he'd finally gotten all of the sand out of his cigars. Plus, the boat wasn't rocking, which made it a hell of alot easier to play a goddamn game of poker. 

For a few seconds, when he'd got there, and he'd been waiting outside of her door with nothing but a deck of cards, he'd felt a bit unsure about this whole thing. Smoker didn't do things like this. Catching up with old friends was for old Marines who had alot of time on their hands to tell boring-ass stories, instead of Marines that were out and about in teh world maiming pirates like they were supposed to. 

Yet standing outside her door, preparing to knock, he couldn't help but wonder how the years had, and... if it would be the same as when they used to... and she looked so different now but she'd always been really.. and they'd never... but he'd always wondered about... and now there were both real, well-known Marines, out in the field kicking ass instead of taking the names down at Headquarters... and he's always really respected her even if she was... 

Then he'd decided to stop being such a pansy and just go the fuck in, because she'd invited him and it would get his mind off the stupid-ass ceremony he was waiting for. Headquarters was forcing him to stay here on pain of court martial. And while he really could not give less of a rat's ass about what Headquarters thought, he sadly _did_ have to care about Hina's devil-fruit powers and large fleet of gunnery ships. Hina'd always been by-the-book, and tenacious as a pitbull. 

Infuriating woman. He shouldn't have worried about their get-together. All these years, and it was exactly the same. 

"Full house," the Black Cage announced over the rim of her gin-and-tonic, and laughed her odd breathy little laugh. "Hina victorious! You really haven't changed at all, 'Smoker'."

Fortunately, Smoker wasn't drunk enough yet to have bet anything good. Goddamit. Why wasn't he drunk yet? 

Hina always drove him to drink. 

"Shut up," Smoker glowered into his rum. "Didn't this used to be more fun?"

Hina was still snickering. He wondered how long she could keep that up. "I think we just used to be cheaper drunks. And Jesse and Walter were around to keep you from losing every round."

Smoker stabbed out his cigar, and started working on a new one. He never really missed the nicotine until it was gone. "... Point."

A thought struck him, like a bolt out of the... er... carcinogenic haze, which for once was not entirely his fault, "Wait. If I'm a Commodore now, I could order you let me get my crew the fuck out of here before those sissies decide to parade my subordinate and I around like goddamn beauty queens."

"You think I'd listen? Don't be foolish, Smoker," Hina snorted, delicately. Delicacy was criminally wrong on most Marines, but on Hina it just looked classy. He knew that she worked very hard on that. It part of Hina's essential Hina-ness, evenif he didn't understand quite why_. Women_. "I'm not going to be the one who has to explain to Headquarters why their heroes-of-the-day didn't show up for a ceremony with Nefertari Vivi herself. And you owe me for those ships whose time I wasted running around after Straw Hat. And in any case? They'd probably give me a medal for stopping you. Hell, if I could get you back to Loguetown they'd give me_ two_. They've got that incompetent Lyle in there now..."

"Heh," Smoker grinned, "Remember that time during survival training where that little fucker..."

Hina smiled a secret smile, and lit another cigarette. "... was trying to get over the netting in the obstacle course..."

"And Walter and I cut the moorings so that he ended up stuck in a tree, and Staff Sergeant Fujiwara wouldn't let him down until he figured out a way to cut himself out."

"That was terrible," Hina said, wryly. "He couldn't get down for three days!"

"I know. The degenerates in Loguetown will eat him alive," Smoker looked almost maybe sort of happy. The rum was finally kicking in. 

"Hina alarmed," Hina smirked. "I'll have to go to the funeral, of course, and Lyle will make for an awfully ugly corpse." 

She shuffled the deck. 

"Rematch?" 

"I WILL defeat you," and Smoker was back to business. Bloody Hina. He WOULD defeat her! 

... after they heard from whoever was knocking on the door.

"Come in," said Hina.

"Are you sure it's okay?"

"Yes," she shrugged. 

"Sir!" One of his men entered cautiously, and then saluted. 

"What the hell are you doing here?" Smoker turned hopefully, thinking that maybe some kind of freak emergency had happened that would call his crew away before that godawful ceremony. Admittedly, tmost people would be hard-pressed to tell that his tone was hopeful. Ten years of chain-smoking and a naturally impassive disposition had given Smoker all the vocal expressiveness of a trash compactor. He liked that. It helped keep other people in line. 

Except for Hina knew, damn her. She knew him all too welll, and seemed vastly entertained by this whole scenario. 

Oddly, Dvorak looked disappointed rather than pale or intimidated. The hell? 

"It's Lieutenant Tashigi, sir."

"What about her?" Smoker ground at his cigar. "Corporal Brewer didn't let her near the gunpowder again, did he?" 

For one brief, horrifying moment, Smoker pictured his beloved bike and half of the hull blown out by one of Tashigi's bizarre accidents. His _bike_. 

"No sir," Dvorak quickly assured him, and the world righted itself. "It's just... it's four in the morning, sir. The Sar-er, the Lieutenant went out into town by herself, and said that she'd be back by eighteen-hundred hours. Except she's not. We thought you should know."

Shit. There were still Baroque Works agents out there, and you could always trust Tashigi to do some damn fool thing like trip over her own shoe-laces and spend twelve hours lying unconscious in a rain gutter. 

"Hina disappointed," Hina sighed. "A night on the town? You've been teaching that poor girl to pick up your bad habits."

Smoker tried, and failed, to imagine Tashigi in one of the seedy pirate bars he frequented because they felt a little like home. He wasn't a very imaginative man at the best of times, and when he did imagine things they usually involved punching stuff, or chaining people up in the brig. What the hell did Hina think that she was saying? 

...Then he refrained from mentioning that at least _his_ junior officer, unlike _Hina_'s crewmen, wasn't a complete and utter nancy-boy. Disco should be a court-martialable offense.

"I doubt it," his rum buzz was wearing off, and he'd gone back to glowering again. Smoker's brow was used enough to being furrowed that it didn't mind. He stood. "Send out squad four and squad two to search the town. We don't want to cause any alarm right off."

"Sir!" Dvorak ran off. That was good. It gave Smoker more room to start pacing.

"She'd better not have done something dumbassed because of what that punk Roronoa pulled with Straw Hat in Alubarna."

Which had reduced Tashigi to tears, for some mysterious and indescipherable feminine reason. After he'd told her to smarten up and get stronger so that she wouldn't cry like a pansy every time these kinds of things happened, Hina had treated him to an icy glare and a refreshing lecture about 'sensitivity' which had only served to confuse him further. Feh. Whoever had put Hina through management training ought to be keelhauled. 

Hina looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. And for all those finicky manners, her laugh sounded like she was trying to chuckle up a hairball. "Hina amused! You're worried the girl's still upset about Straw Hat."

Smoker growled, "Damn strait I'm worried. I'm worried about having her back in time for that fucking ceremony, so that we can get the hell out of there."

"Naturally. I suppose I'll take care of my own business, then, now that our game's over," Hina started to leave. As she passed by, she leaned in to purr mockingly, "And don't worry about being worried about the kid. I think it's... cute."

Smoker felt like hitting something. Sadly, it wasn't his ship. 

-TBC-

***

Author's note: This is my first OP fic. Is it craptastic? Yes? No? Maybe so? Please do let me know :) This is a bit shorter than my typical fic-chapterage, on account of it's my first OP experimenting. 

I hope Hina is characterized in a... relatively okay manner. Hell, I hope that for all of the characters. All I really have to go on are manga translations, and badly-subbed pirated anime DVDs (which, though not strictly legal, are oddly appropriate) that have yet to reach the Hina stages. 

I have Tashigi down as a Lieutenant because she and Smoker were promoted after the Straw Hat Crew defeated Crocodile, obviously. The rank after Sergeant Major in the Marine hierarchy, according to Oda, is actually "Warrant Officer", with Second Lieutenant coming after that. I just thought that a Warrant Officer sounded like some sort of prison official rather than a real field-officer, so I skipped her up two. I suppose I'll lose my Continuity Whore Club Membership Card for that. 

Yes, this probably is going to be Smoker/Hina eventually. I love the Zoro/Tashigi dynamic (and am lukewarm on the 'ship), but I couldn't really think of a way to plausibly insert Zoro into this fic, so I doubt there'll be much of that.


	2. Tashigi, Zero

**Stronger  
**01 - Tashigi, Zero

Nanohana was different from the other, smaller villages they'd stopped at during their pursuit of Straw Hat. It was a real town. There were alleyways so labyrinthine that your could lose your self, and never find it again. There were crowds in the marketplaces, so deep with sea-bond strangers that you could drown in them. There were drinks, and dives, and dalliances aplenty, for those who knew where to look and how to brood. 

Not that it mattered. 

Tashigi wasn't looking for for sex or rum or rock-and-roll to take the mission off her mind. Nor was she looking for a dilapidated pier or atmospheric cafe where she could leisurely pore over all the particulars of her discouraged mood, and steep herself in existential angst. Nanohana might be larger and more exciting than most of the places that their ship docked, but really, she could find those things anywhere. If she wanted to. Which she didn't. Tashigi knew that she couldn't bury herself in distractions and expect to get out of the Grandline alive, and she had no intention of repeating that embarrassing crying jag. Since when did Marines cry? Why must she always turn into such a ... _girl_ when these things happened? It must have been so humiliating for poor Captain Smoker, to have her break down like that in front of a fellow officer. 

And she was probably blushing about it right now. Great. Wasn't _that _wonderful. It didn't matter how much she tried not to act girly; her body, as usual, was hell bent on doing the exact opposite of whatever she demanded of it. 

So.

Sigh. 

Tashigi wasn't looking for anything simple. She wasn't up to hounding informants about Roronoa and the crew of degenerates he worked with that evening, and she doubted that there were any interesting sharp objects to be sought out in an area where warring factions had so recently cast down their arms. 

No. No none of that. 

Tashigi was looking for justice. 

...

One would think that she would already have found it. Grandline was full of all sorts of miraculous beasts. Yet for all the months at sea she spent, and the hour she'd wasted pacing half of Nanohana, Tashigi'd found nothing. And the Marine had a sneaking suspicion that this was not entirely because she was nearly as blind as a bat. Tashigi was not, by any means, unaware. She could still see the tents of the desert-dwellers who traveled into Nanohana to peddle their wares, their white faded to a brown that grew weary with travel. She smelled the scent of smoke - real smoke, woodsmoke - in the air, and the faint tang of curry, and she knew that she was getting closer to one of the impromptu street celebrations that reports said had been springing up, since the rains had finished washing away Albastians' frustrations, and the giddy reality of peace finally began to hit them. Tashigi tasted the grit on her tongue and felt the trade winds muss her hair. She wasn't stupid. Her senses were working. She would know justice, when she found it. 

And justice was a no-show. Alubarna proved it. The lawless ruled, so that even the law had to rely on them. The people of Albasta had wanted justice, to the point that they'd risen up to take it for themselves in a revolution. But didn't matter how hard they had worked to gain power, or how much they wished. They would never have real justice. All they had was the slack that lawless pirates had cut them, while fighting amongst themselves. The lesser of two evils. 

Only those who ran wild had the power to impose their will on the Grandline. 

But there must be justice, somewhere. Tashigi had to believe that. So if she couldn't see it, then the problem must lie in her. That was what she had to fix. Smoker said it best: try harder, try harder, try harder and when you're sick of trying harder, try harder to try harder, and... 

...but ...

she was getting so _tired_...

A street-lamp guttered.

Wait, was it getting late already? 

Tashigi stopped to look at her watch, angling it towards the setting sun. She was nearly out of time! If Captain Smoker had returned, and she were late... she'd already disappointed him enough to last a few months! There was no way that she was going to get caught returning late. She couldn't be absent, in case something happened that might allow her to redeem herself. 

The Marine turned on her heel and began to run back towards the dockyards, dodging revelers and wandering drunks as she went. 

Unfortunately, since Tashigi happened to be Tashigi, this could only lead to disaster. 

***

"This is a disaster!" Jack cursed, and slammed his empty glass of bourbon back on to the counter. "A total, and complete disaster! Ms. Next Monday is missing or in jail or whatever, so I've got no buyer. And if I don't unload you soon, Captain Bell is going to _kill _me."

The locked chest taking up the barstool next to him seemed disinclined to hold up its side of the conversation. Jack persisted. 

"The Captain can't kill me," Jack tried to convince both the chest, and himself. "I'm young! I'm healthy! I'm charming! I have devil fruit powers! ...I'm even almost debt-free! Killing me would be a complete waste of potential. Plus, it would get blood all over everything. And blood-soaked is not a good look on anybody, except maybe Mihawk the Hawkeyes, and even then only because he's one freaky-looking son of a bitch, or so I've heard. Yes. Therefore, there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever of Captain Bell killing me. I mean, look at me. Who could kill a face like this?"

The chest, being an inanimate object, did not look into the mirror behind the bar where Jack was reflected. That was alright. Jack was scrawny and sharp-boned, with questionably-styled hair. His shirt had seen better days, and his patched-up suede jacket had probably seen better decades. In short: the chest was not missing out on much.

Jack sighed.

"Captain Bell could, definitely."

Jack leapt to his feet, his smile returning with manic desperation. 

This was not be the first time that he wondered if he ought to take to wearing a top-hat, if only for effect, "Barkeep! A word with you, good sir!"

The bartender was cleaning a glass, but deigned to sidle his eyes over. 

"Whaddya want?"

"Would you happen to be aware of any patrons who might have, say, ten to eleven million bellies worth of spending money at hand?"

The bartender blinked, and then started to laugh at him. Eventually he had to put the glass down and clutch at the counter for balance. 

"I'll take that as a 'no'," Jack slumped. Plan J - like A through I before it - had been a spectacular failure. He should have known that the kinds of bars he'd find customers in would be empty, what with Hina the Black Cage in town. 

Oh well. It was only sunset. He still had time for Plan K. 

Jack grabbed his merchandise, and then disappeared through the door. Literally. 

***

Run, run, run... Tashigi was not getting out of breath. Progress! Those laps she did 'round the starboard bow were finally paying off. 

Wow. There were really alot more people out on the street than when she had been walking around before. Or maybe she was just noticing them more, on account of she had to be careful to stay out of their way. Tashigi had to make sure that her concentration was as perfect as she could make it, and scan the horizon at all times for new obstacles. A person just never knew when something like, say, a sign, or an urn, would leap into her path of its own accord. Really, those inanimate objects were very dangerous. 

Forward, then jump up and over, then watch out for that abnormally tiny dog, then turn to the left WITHOUT hitting the street-lamp, then try not to be distracted by all the shiny lights coming from that street party (please please please let her not be blinded by anything please please please)... 

"HEY!"  


Tashigi stopped in her tracks, and narrowly missed running herself into a wall. She _did_ knock her shin against a bicycle rack, but as far as these things went with her, that was pretty much par for the course. 

"Um, hey?" Tashigi turned, surprised, to see some guy holding a drink at the outskirts of the party. He had one one of those funny dress robe things that all of the Albastian men wore. It wasn't flamboyant enough for her to suspect that he might be a Baroque Works agent. For some reason, pirates had the greatest color sense. 

"What's got you in such a hurry, miss? Is everything alright? You look pretty stressed out," the guy smiled and gestured her over. Tashigi decided to take him up on his offer. As an officer of the Marines, she needed to be accessible in case this citizen was having some kind of emergency. People like Tashigi had to help rehabilitate the Marine reputation! She knew firsthand what some of the commanders in the backwater areas got away with. Word was that all of the boredom and the paperwork drove them a little... eccentric. 

Hm. Was she eccentric yet? With every challenge they faced in the Grandline (or, to put it better, every challenge that Captain Smoker dragged their sorry butts through), her quest for the blood of Roronoa Zoro seemed a little more insane. Tashigi might not have what it took to do this on her own. She certainly hadn't had it in Loguetown, or Alubarna. 

"Oh, I have to get back to my Boss," Tashigi smiled back, politely. Her expression did not reach her eyes. 

"Business! What business could you possibly have now, of all times!?" the guy exclaimed, raising his voice so that he could be heard over all of the party-related babble. "Whatever it is, it can't be so important that you'd miss out on the party. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event! Aren't you happy that things can go back to normal?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"No buts about it," he manhandled Tashigi into the crowd, before she quite realized what was going on. It had never crossed her mind that he might.

"I'm Omar, but that's not important. Tonight, Ms.Business, I am going to make sure that YOU have a good time."

Wait a second. Men didn't manhandle Tashigi. Tashigi manhandled men. That was just the way that the universe worked. Who forgot to pass this jerk the memo?

***

Jack reemerged from a door on the other, more respectable side of town. If the Marines were gonna be inconsiderate enough to swarm Nanohana and fuck up his biggest customer, and the black market wanted to wuss out and lie too low for him to dump his merchandise on it, then Jack was clearly going to have to switch demographics. Surely there had to be at least one trader in this damn town rich enough to want to dabble with the devil. Jack just had to find him. Yeah. That was it. That was totally it. He was on a role! Gooooo Jack.

... Jack hoped that he wasn't developing a paunch. That was the problem with having the power to connect completely different doorways. Being able to walk into a doorway on one side of the city, and then exit through a doorway on the other side of the city, made traveling long distances on foot kind of pointless. 

Sooooo... merchants. Merchants. If Jack were a merchant, where would he be? In a shop, probably. That was what merchants did. But sundown had already passed him by, and the only shops open were bars. Hm. Reevaluation. If he were a merchant, at night, celebrating the aversion of civil war, where would he be?

... Jack had no freaking clue. 

Jack needed some alcohol. It was time to find a kegger. 

***

It took Tashigi a few seconds to process the fact that she was, apparently, being hit on. Or at least flirted with. Was there a difference there? Should she be picking up on... 'vibes', or something? For Tashigi, meeting men usually involved either screaming demands at them, or causing them severe bodily harm. 

Hunh.

She really really had to get back to the ship. She'd told them she would be back soon, and Tashigi was never late, because she took her job seriously. If officers didn't have respect for their words, how were enlisted men supposed to have any!? Nope. There was no sense staying here at all, even if this Omar person seemed like a decent citizen. His friends also looked pretty law-abiding, even if some of them were kind of tipsy. All the lanterns strong up were pretty, and also a nice break from the boat, and look! He had gone off to fetch her a refreshing orange juice. It would be impolite to refuse an innocent drink, wouldn't it? Alot of those rebel types had been pretty heavily armed - maybe he might know something about swords! Tashigi didn't really spend time around many people who could hold a decent conversation. All of these people looked so cheery and being off of the boat for a while was just what her bad mood needed. And it was her night off, and all, and... was being hit on really that bad?

When in doubt, junior officers were supposed to follow one very simple directive: ask themselves What Their Commanding Officer Would Do, and then shut up and do it. This usually worked out fairly well. It was easy to remember, for the ones who were maybe short on brains but big on special combat powers, and if you screwed things up at least your direct superior wouldn't be angry enough to demote you back to private. 

Er, plus, whatever their commanding officer would do was usually the right thing. 

Tashigi was feeling discouraged, so what was she going to do about it? Tashigi knew exactly what Captain Smoker would have done in her situation. Namely, he would not have_ been_ in her situation, because he was Captain Smoker, and Captain Smoker DID NOT get discouraged. Frustrated, maybe. Angry, probably. Annoyed, certainly. But discouraged? The was no chance in hell. 

However, _if_ Captain Smoker _were_ to somehow, hypothetically, inexplicably, unprecedentedly become discouraged, Tashigi knew that he would go to one of those degenerate pirate bars and bash heads in until he forgot all about it. Then he would pretend that it hadn't happened, and drive it completely from his mind. 

Now, there was no way that Tashigi was going to one of those horrible places. She was too much of a lightweight for bar fights, or pirate grog. But... this could be _her_ version of a degenerate pirate bar, except open-air and with respectable people in it. And then she'd feel better, and she and the Captain could never think of her unfortunate incident ever again. So she would stay! 

"Here ya go, Ms.Business, " Omar handed her a drink, and attempted to look at her rakishly under the brim of his cloth headdress desert hood thing.

"Thank you," Tashigi nodded, "Wow. This is quite the party you've got going, here."

"Well," Omar leaned in, "_I _can't believe that a nice girl like you hasn't got her own party to go to. It's our duty as Albastians to celebrate at _least_ until tomorrow. Haven't you heard? You can't be _that_ busy. Tomorrow the partying is going to reach whole new levels. The Princess herself is back, and she's coming! Hina the Black Cage will be there too! They're throwing a big public rally for the Marines who got rid of that pirate bastard who was screwing with the rain."

"... I see."

The crowd milled. Some guy in suede nearly elbowed her in the gut. 

"Yeah, you totally have to go! It'll be great. It wasn't Hina that took him down, you know. They sent in some real elite troubleshooters all the way from Loguetown - Smoker the White Hunter, fresh outta Marine Headquarters special black-ops unit, and his hand-picked protégé, the swordsman Tashigi. In order to defeat Crocodile's number-one minion, this Tashigi guy had to be able to cut through steel. Can you imagine? It will be so neat to see them."

Oh, no. They couldn't possibly think any of that... she hadn't been 'picked' at all, she couldn't cut through steel, it was all so... 

Tashigi was NOT going to cry.  


She sipped her orange juice, so that she wouldn't have to speak. It tasted more like orange-colored vodka. 

Was that it? This person couldn't possibly believe any of that bullshit propaganda. Did he know who she was? Was that it? Was this flattery? Was this person trying to... to... to... liquor her up and then _womanize _her!?? MEN! That was SO typical! Men were all the same, only capable of thinking about one thing. Sure, for some of them, that thing was a decent thing - like Captain Smoker's dedication to justice. But the rest of them were thinking of something... much more inappropriate! 

"Listen here, you!" Tashigi wrenched away from Omar, scowling. Her arms crossed. "I don't know WHO the hell you think you are, but you can't just go around repeating stupid gossip just to get your way. I will not allow it!" 

"Whoa... what are you_ talking_ about?" Omar shrank, taken aback. "Listen, lady, what's your problem? I was just trying to be friendly. I know that alot of people don't think kindly of the Marines, but... sheesh. They did save us. This has really restored my faith in them. For all their talk of justice, they abandoned us for so long, but really they were only biding their time until they could bring their big guns in. Isn't that kind of... comforting? At least?"

Tashigi deflated. 

What _was_ her problem? This wasn't his fault. And Headquarters was only doing what they had to do. This was... this was her fault. All of it. She was so weak. It was Tashigi versus the world, and so far, Tashigi scored a perfect zero. No physical strength like Roronoa, no commanding presence like Captain Smoker, no grace or charm like Captain Hina... Tashigi had to get stronger, but what was she supposed to strengthen? 

"I'm very sorry," she said quietly. She could not meet his eyes. "I'm not usually like that at all."

"If you say so," Omar looked skeptical. "Maybe you need a few more drinks, hunh? It's been a rough few years for everyone. Makes sense some folks would have a hard time getting back to real life."

"Um... no thanks."

Omar looked stung. Did he see her refusal as a rejection? Tashigi messed so many things up... that hadn't been what she meant at all. 

"Again - I'm really, really sorry," Tashigi rushed to make herself understood. "I think that was a reflex. It's just that, well. I've been all over the Grandline, you know. People are dangerous out here. And what makes it worse is that you never_ know _with people, do you?" 

Tashigi began to gesture. She hadn't realized how much she needed to say this to someone. Anyone. Even a complete stranger named Omar. "Sure, you meet guys, and maybe they're kind of a screw-ups, but they seem alright. They seem okay. Maybe they even seem more than okay, like you have things in common that you could talk about and they're sort of nice as well as really talented. And you're happy, because how often does that happen in your line of work? Or any line of work? But of course, as soon as they manage to suck you in they show their true colors and BAM! They turn out to be misogynists or deadbeat dads... or... or... or _Roronoa Zoro_!!!"

And then where were you? Where were you!? You were an eighth of the way down the Grandline where suddenly there were revolutions and Armed Seas and NO ORDERS, and they gave you medals for no reason on ribbons that twisted like nooses. You were where Marines were the exception rather than the rule, and pirates governed entire nations, and the whole wide world turned so far upside-down you weren't sure if it could ever be righted again. _That_ was where you were. Wherever that was. Somewhere where the magnetics were all screwed-up, the polarities went out of whack, and nothing made any damn sense anymore. 

Omar began to back away. Slowly. As if he were dealing with a vicious animal. "Y-you know... just what is your business, anyway?"

His eyes drifted towards her sword, and the deathgrip she had on it. "L-look. None of us c-can fight here, right? And I - I've been nice to you, right? Please. Stay, if you want, I'll pay for your drinks. Please don't hurt any of us. Everything's over now.. we don't want any trouble with pirates or bounty hunters.. not that I would call you anything like a pirate or bounty hunter, Ms.Business. That's not my business at all."

And then he fled. 

Well, that was the end of that. She guessed. Time to go on home. 

***

... had he heard the name, _Roronoa Zoro_? From the lips of someone who _knew_ Roronoa Zoro?

JACKPOT! 

Jack was the man. Jack was THE man! The only pirate or bounty hunter brash enough to be out and about with over half of the Black Cage fleet in dock, and HE had found her. Ha ha. HaHA! Take that, Captain Bell! Jack was in the ZONE! His peerless instincts had drawn him to this kegger, for sure! 

Now to figure out if she was rich, using his unbeatable sales techniques.

"Yo," called Jack, because she had put down her glass and looked about to up and walk away. It was his personal favor to her. Even though Jack got that no self-respecting bounty pirate would want to hand around such a lame party, with stupid lights and girly mix drinks, he felt that it was his duty as a salesman to make sure that this customer did not miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime. "Did I hear you say that you know Roronoa Zoro?"

Step one: find a topic, and pretend to agree with whatever the customer thought about it. This was otherwise known as 'chatting the customer up.' It made them feel like you gave a shit, and for once, Jack actually did. He _needed_ this sale. 

"So what if I do?" the target stopped, and her eyes narrowed. Or at least Jack thought so. It was hard to see them, between the glare on her glasses and the glare of her shirt. His target must take 'adventurous' pirate fashion to heart. Jack hadn't known they _made_ shirts that loud. 

" If you do... I'd say that it's amazing that you know the famous swordsman pirate!" Jack had to play it safe. Maybe she was part of his pirate crew. The last thing that Jack needed was Roronoa Zoro out to maim him, in addition to Captain Bell. "Roronoa's so cool. Is it true that he killed two hundred bounty hunters on his own at Whiskey Peak? And that he can cut through titanium like it's butter? And that he can swing his sword so fast that he can create tidal waves? And that..."

The customer was frowning Shit. 

***

Who was this joker? Since when were piracy and injustice _cool_? That Grandline didn't make any sense. Didn't these people realize how much harm men like Crocodile and Arlong and Ace the Burning Fist did to all of those poor unfortunates who crossed their path? Didn't they care? They thought...

They thought that power was cool. 

"No. It's. Not.," Tashigi cut the shabby man off with a glare, and unconsciously gripped the hilt of her Shigure so hard that her knuckles began to whiten. 

And yeah, yeah power was cool. Tashigi understood that. Her Shigure, for example, was one of the most beautiful things this side of the western Redline. But pirates like Roronoa Zoro didn't deserve to have power if all they were going to use it for was bullying and lawlessness! That wasn't right. That wasn't fair. That wasn't _justice_. Power should belong to people who deserved it because they worked hard and did the right thing, not selfish deceitful criminals that cared only about personal reputation and gain, who were born with big impressive male muscles and given famous swords for no reason better than LUCK!

"Oh," whoever this new guy was gave Tashigi a knowing look. Clearly he failed to notice the comfort that Tashigi drew from sharp objects during times of emotional crisis. "Ouch. Sorry if I touched a nerve. ...Ex-boyfriend, hunh?"

"NO!" Tashigi cried a little too loudly, and a lot too desperately. Somewhere out there, the spirit of the Wadou Ichimonyi was calling out to be used for justice, and it was her duty as a Marine officer to put things right. "Roronoa Zoro is nothing but a lowlife! I will not rest until he dies by my Shigure... or I am killed myself."

If she were weak, she deserved to be defeated, and she deserved to be killed. That was the code and honour of a swordsman. Roronoa had denied her that, but Tashigi would not be denied again... whatever the outcome of their next meeting. 

There were worse things in life than to die as a swordsman. 

"I see," the shabby man grinned. Tashigi could see the whites of his eyes. "You got the cash to afford a named sword? I'm impressed by your taste. You want to take out Roronoa Zoro? I'm impressed by your courage. So listen up. My name's Jack, but you can think of me as your your personal fairy godfather, 'cause I'm gonna offer you the deal of a lifetime."

-TBC-

***

Author's note: Thank you for all of your kind feedback on the prologue! I hope that chapter one makes for a half-decent followup ^_^. 

To be perfectly honest, this was a hard chapter for me to write. Why?

As the inimitable Stacey, Queen of Marine Fangirls puts it: MARINES DON'T ANGST. Marines do, however, get upset during trying situations, and can also be a tad bit insecure. Or at least they can if they're Tashigi, as I see her. "Tashigi, Zero" was an attempt to portray Tashigi as wound-up and distraught and self-doubting, without miring her in a pit of out-of-character angst. I hope I succeeded without damaging her too badly. The OP characters are, after all, only borrowed toys :P

Jack's "Gate Gate Fruit" power was inspired by Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Originality? From me? Surely you jest. 

Smoker and Hina return next chapter. Also, we learn what the hell is up with Jack, and Tashigi's not returning to Smoker's ship is explained. That all was supposed to go in this chapter, but it got too long.


	3. Big Deals

**Chapter Three - Big Deals**

They had arranged themselves on deck in perfect, symmetrical lines - every man deemed nonessential to ship's operations had a place to be in, and every man was in his place. 

...Except for the leader of Squad A, that is, who was leaning uncomfortably against the railing of the upper deck, looking down at the formation. Few understood why he was up there instead of at the head of his combat group, but this was not the sort of boat where questions were asked of superior officers lightly.

It was four-thirty in the morning. The sun had yet to rise, the salt-air was chilling, and few of them had gotten a good night's sleep, but they were alert and undeterred. Men who weren't didn't last long on their boat. Here, you never knew when you would be treated to a surprise inspection or impromptu training session.

These were not just any old Marines.

The man on the upper deck cleared his throat, "Alright, people. We have a situation."

One of the other squad leaders decided to ask the question that was on everyone else's minds, and get this over with. It wasn't like Sergeant Brewer was Lieutenant Tashigi, or the Captain (which was weird in and of itself) - they were equals.

"What are you doing up there, Bru? Where's Lieutenant Tashigi?" called Sergeant Zhou, who led Squad D. Sergeant Schulze from B was giving him a reproving look. Schulze could bite him.

"That's the situation," Brewer cleared his throat again, clearly uncomfortable. Really, why didn't they just keep the man in supplies where he belonged? "Lieutenant Tashigi has gone missing." 

Suddenly, the Marines looked alot less like lined-up toy soldiers, and alot more like very large, very angry combat professionals. Zhou could feel the tension simmering in the air. 

If someone had messed with the Lieutenant, he was going to get his ass kicked from here to Headquarters. That was not a prediction, nor a threat. That was a fact. Spend a few months isolated at sea with your commanders, and you either grew to hate them, or get very, very attached. 

"I have received orders from the Captain," Brewer soldiered on. "Until this thing is resolved I am to work as Acting Sergeant-Major. Squad leaders are to disperse into Nanohana and systematically search for any and all clues as to the Lieutenant's whereabouts. My men will cover the west, Squad B will cover the north, C the east, and D the south. Any questions?"

"What sort of searching are we talking about here?" said Schulze

Brewer responded with a shark-like grin, "We're authorized to retrieve information by any means necessary."

There were thousands of men in the East Blue Marines Corps, and each and every one had his or her own personal fears. Nevertheless, most agreed that there were only three fates a Marine might meet which were arguably worse than death. 

The first, of course, was capture by pirates. Pirates with a bound Marine were like children with an ant and a magnifying glass. They'd tear his legs off and then burn him alive, just to watch him sizzle. 

The second was hitting a calm belt, and running out of food and fresh water days away from land. They usually ate the new recruits first. 

And the third? The third was being assigned to serve under Captain Smoker.

The reasons for this were many and manifest. Captain Smoker's men were beaten, bruised, abused, and more used to ludicrously dangerous situations than anyone outside of Special Ops could ever hope to admit. In Loguetown the worst of the worst had come to them, and now that they were out of Loguetown they went after the worst of the worst. 

They were sad-assed bastards who were frequently and painfully thrashed during 'training sessions' by a scrawny girl who looked like a blind librarian at a luau. 

They were the few, the proud, and the trodden-upon who were subject daily to the whims of a man whose fight reflex had beaten his flight reflex over the head with a rock until it died, and who therefore did not know the meaning of either "retreat" or "insurmountable odds." 

Their hazing rituals were legendary, and their dropout rate moreso. 

The net result of this? 

Nobody fucked with Captain Smoker's crew. 

NOBODY.

"Dismissed!"

"SIR! YES SIR!"

***

"This is all your fault!" Hina whipped into his office, slammed the door shut, and gestured with her cigarette like it was a rapier.

Now, Smoker didn't know much about women beyond basic reported intelligence. They liked: dead plants, dead animal skin, shiny stuff, inadequate light at dinner, and "feelings." That was why he was so glad that most of the women he met were not, in fact, full-time capital-W Women, but Bar Wenches and female Marines. Smoker regarded "relationships" with the same combination of contempt and dread that he had felt during his days as a Warrant Officer when he met his first Armed Sea. He could respect their power. He was forced by circumstance to accept their existence. But all of his instincts screamed that no good could come of them. 

So. Smoker did not know women.

That being said, Smoker did know Hina, and because he knew Hina he understood instinctively that interrupting whatever insane tirade she had in store for him would only make this whole thing even more of a pain in the ass.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Hina distressed! Hina frustrated! Hina... ENRAGED! Your insensitivity has ruined everything, and I'M going to be responsible for it. And I bet you're happy, aren't you? Aren't you? You're happy that this ceremony is going to be ruined," Hina clenched the cigarette between her teeth, like a Doberman with a chew toy. Then she slammed her fist into his desk with enough force to set his pens rattling. "Well I'm happy for you Smoker. I really am. Great fucking job. Your men have been out there for two hours and so far they've got jack-all. And that girl isn't exactly hard to spot in a crowd, so that means she's either out of the city, or she doesn't want to be found. What am I supposed to do when Nefertari Vivi shows up and half of her reason for being here is missing? Put Fullbody in a dress and hope for the best!? If you could keep your big mouth SHUT then none of this would be happening!"

Smoker sympathized, fleetingly, with Roronoa Zoro. 

Then he killed that thought, and took a shot of whiskey to disinfect his brain for good measure. 

"What the hell are you talking about?" Smoke deadpanned, annoyed. Then he leaned back and put his feet up on the desk. Tactical analysis suggested that this this front wasn't about to get any more pleasant any time soon, so he might as well get comfortable.

Hina sucked on her nicotine, took a moment to pull herself together, and retreated back from enraged to her usual sardonic. Smoker was relieved. Hina was a Marine. Now she would be reasonable. 

"I'm talking about bitching out your subordinate and causing her to run off to hell knows where," Hina rolled her eyes, and then sighed. "You always break your help at the most inconvenient times. That poor girl, it's no wonder that she cracked from the stress. I told you I sympathized with her problems."

"I do NOT 'bitch.' Telling her not to be weak and go into stupid-ass histrionics every time she gets pushed on the playground was good advice," Smoker frowned, offended. Clearly reason was too much to ask for that this point. Maybe it was part of some kind of bizarre female pact of which he had been blissfully unaware. Hell if he knew. 

...

"And I don't break my help, either."

An eyebrow raised, "Since when?"

"It's not my fault if the dumbasses they graduate from Officer Candidate School these days are weaklings and fuckwits," Smoker protested, his frown deepening. "And I'm not putting up with it under my command. If they can't shape up it's better they ship out."

"So you wanted her gone? Is that it? If you'd told me I would have traded you for Jango," Hina's smirked sarcastically. Smoker wasn't going to dignify that last bit with a response. 

"Actually," he paused, "...I figured she'd stay." 

He guessed that those dipshits at the OCS weren't the only ones with shitty character judgment.

***

_"What do you mean by 'fairy godfather?"_

_"I mean that I can give you power. You want them to respect you, don't you?"_

_"...I don't know what you're talking about."_

_"Hah! Of course you do. That's what you want from Roronoa, isn't it? That's what's got your panties in a knot about him. No one respects you for who you are; least of all him. And no one will respect you until you get stronger. No matter what you do, you'll always just be some kitten with a knife trying to play around with the big cats. Doesn't that bother you?"_

_"...."_

_"Yeah. Sure it does. But you can become someone that they would have reason to respect. I can help you do that."_

_"How? And ...why would you want to help me? It's like you said. I'm no big deal, right?"_

_"The why is the ten million bellies you're going to pay me. But the how? Here. Open the box. The how... is this."_

***

Every fifteen minutes, they hit a new shitty pirate bar. This wasn't exactly the first area that Sergeant Schulze - or any right-thinking person, for that matter - would look for Lieutenant Tashigi. She wasn't Captain Smoker. But what the seedy side of town lacked in things that might attract their Lieutenant, it more than made up for in shady characters that might have decided to get their jollies by messing with their commanding officer. 

Besides. At least being around all of the scumbags gave his men the opportunity to vent a bit.

He really, really pitied Zhou, who'd gotten stuck up in the fancy-schmancy pansy part of town. Zhou's boys couldn't even wreak some quality property damage without getting the Captain in deep shit with the Black Cage Fleet (something which Captain Smoker would not appreciate, if Lazlow from Supplies was right about what Captain Hina could do to a man with all of those chains.)

"So you haven't seen any swordswomen in here lately?" Schulze asked the bartender, while two of his troops roughed up some wino in the corner who'd given them lip about looking for the ship's bicycle. Dirty-minded bugger had it coming. And it was good to set an example. "Like, say, one about 5"3, with a really loud shirt on? A little... eccentric, maybe?"

"Can't say as I have," the bartender grumbled, cleaning a filthy glass with an even more filthy dishrag. Schulze guessed that spread the dirt around, at least. 

Not that he gave a shit about pirate health-code regulations. If disease took them, more power to it. 

A moan of pain wafted towards them from the corner, followed by a yelp and a sickening crack.

"You sure about that, pal?"

"I swear, I swear! Just stop drivin' away my customers," the bartender sidled closer to him, his voice low and desperate. "Look, if I can give you a pirate will you leave me alone? I got a business to run here."

"What kind of pirate?" Schulze grabbed the bartender by the collar of his shirt, and yanked him across the bar. Give lowlives like this an inch, and they'd take a mile, they would.

"Real crazy guy," the bartender whispered. As if he wouldn't be pegged a rat by half the pirates in the city by sundown, anyways. "So he shows up here, with this box. Wants to know if I can hook him up with anyone not currently, er, uh, 'indisposed' who'd be willing to buy an uneaten Devil Fruit. Said he was gettin' desperate, that his Captain made his profits offa finding and selling the things to pirates who wanted a bit of an edge, and that he was their transport guy. Said he had to sell the Devil Fruit get the cash to pay off some debt he had, else the pirate Captain was gonna be pissed. My guess is, he was here to deal with some Baroque Works Officer Agent looking to power up and get promoted, but when the shit hit the fan he got left high and dry."

"And did you buy?" Schulze pulled the shirt tighter around the bartender's neck, cutting off his air.

"Are you kidding? I wish. I don't got that kind of cash lyin' around, and neither do my contacts. This place is a hole."

Well. That had... nothing to do with the Lieutenant whatsoever.

Sergeant Schulze unceremoniously dropped the man to the floor, and motioned to the privates who'd accompanied him. "Come on. The only intel here is useless."

***

Hina still looked disgruntled. But Smoker'd explained himself. What the hell was he supposed to do - break out into an interpretative dance? Maybe he'd been wrong about the bizarre female pact. Maybe putting up with all of this foppy clowns on her crew had finally gone to Hina's head. 

This wasn't Smoker's day. People just kept disappointing him. What was wrong with Marines these days? Where the hell had standards gone? 

"I explained myself," Smoker righted himself so that he could stab out the dwindling remains his cigar, simultaneously fishing another one out of his desk door with a tendril of smoke. "Why are you still here?"

  
"You know, Smoker, some of us have it alot worse when it comes to subordinates than you do. Like when poor Admiral Rourke had that imbecile Nelson as his assistant, and his bearers kept 'accidentally' dropping him overboard," Hina drew out another cigarette, and then fumbled for her lighter, "But enough about that. We've got other immediate problems to deal with. Like the ceremony this afternoon."

Shit. He'd been hoping that she'd gotten distracted. It was really too bad that making smoke-animals usually only worked on people under the age of ten. He would have to think of a more cunning way to change the topic.

"Whiskey?" he offered, gesturing to the bottle on his desk. It was old and high-proof. 

Hina flicked some ashes on to his desk, and chuckled, "Hina not stupid."

Smoker cleared his throat, and then poured himself another shot, "Tashigi's gone anyways. That means: screw the goddamn ceremony."

"That's not acceptable." Smoker looked for an escape route, but Hina was leaning against the door. 

"What do you care, anyways? Headquarters doesn't even have to know," Smoker grumbled, shoving another cigar into his mouth as if it were a lifeline. "This whole thing is bullshit, and we both know it."

REAL Marines didn't let themselves get paraded around like goddamn debutantes. And Smoker was, above all else, a REAL Marine. Hina would have to understand that. 

"No it's not," Hina said quietly. 

What?

"What?" said Smoker, slightly confused. She wasn't supposed to babble nonsense until after he distracted her by getting her drunk, dammit. 

"I said: no it's not," Hina replied more forcefully, "Do you honestly think I would care about this if it were just some juvenile little party? If I got off on arranging streamer colors then I would have stayed home and become a socialite." 

She huffed, "I could be out there capturing pirates, or securing strategic navigational islands. There's been an upsurge in pirate activity coming down the line ever since you left Loguetown. But I chose to stay here. Because this has to get done."

***

_"Pirate! I won't let you get away with this!"_

_"Whoa, whoa, this is grade-A merchandise. What's the matter?"_

_"You're nothing but a filthy smuggler, that's what's the matter."_

_"I... holy shit, you're a Marine!?"_

_"Lieutenant Tashigi of the East Blue Armada. In the Name of the World Government, you are under arrest!"_

_"You think you can catch me? Think again."_

_"I don't have to chase you. I'm holding your merchandise."_

_"Hey! Marines don't steal!!"_

_"I'm not stealing. I am confiscating contraband."_

_"You still want the power, hunh? You Marines are all the same."_

_"That's not it at all!!!"_

_"Isn't it?"_

_"...Shut up. Or I'll... I'll... I'll shut you up!"_

_  
"You can try. But let's be realistic, shall we? I've got devil powers, and you've got jack-all. You don't even stand a chance against a guy like me."_

_"You've eaten the devil fruit? ...I'll take my chances."_

_  
"You look hesitant."_

_"If I am defeated, so be it. No big loss, right?"_

_"Aw, look - your shouting has drawn an audience! It's time for my disappearing act."_

***

Squad D had taken to kicking down the doors of middle-class pansies like fish to water - not only because it was fun to make the nancy-boy civilians bleat, but out of sheer desperation. 

All attachments and pride aside, there were very practical reasons for wanting Lieutenant Tashigi onboard. After all - as much as she enjoyed knocking them around, she was still the lesser evil in comparison to whatever unimaginable hell a training session with a pissed-off Captain Smoker would be. The longer the Lieutenant stayed missing, the more likely the Captain was to get into one of his moods, and then all hell would break loose. 

Once they'd finished their preliminary sweep of the streets at five and realized that she hadn't just knocked herself out somewhere, a cold, leaden fear had settled into the pits of their stomachs.

One hundred and twenty-four doors, two threatened complaints to Headquarters, four screamed profanities, and an overzealous old woman with a very large purse hitting him over the head later, Zhou hit paydirt. 

"Y-yeah. I saw her running somewhere, last night, and I invited her to my party. Good looking girl, your Lieutenant."

The man, who called himself Omar, tittered nervously in the doorway of his bungalow. Zhou had the private who was partnered with him push their witness into his living room, and on to an uncomfortable-looking chair. Zhou handcuffed him there. This was going to be a proper interrogation. 

"The Lieutenant finally gets some action, and it's this clown?" the private mumbled. "Joey's gonna love this. If her standards are that low, then I've got some bets to change..."

"This is neither the time, nor the place for that kind of comment, private!" Zhou ordered.

The private gulped. "Sorry, sir."

Zhou turned to their witness.

"Tell me more."

"It wasn't my fault. She tripped, and fell, and then that was it... It wasn't my fault. Please don't hurt me!" Omar began to shake. "Don't turn me over to the White Hunter!!!"

"You don't have to be afraid of Captain Smoker right now," Zhou had had it with this blubbering fool. It was time to knock some sense into the joker - Marine style. He'd probably be frightened into making sense before the first punch landed. "You have to be afraid of ME. Now tell me your story again. This time I want the long version."

***

"Right. So Headquarters is screwing us both over with these dumbass orders," Smoker growled through his cigars. "That's all the more reason not to go through with this."

"Oh, for gods' sakes, Smoker, take some responsibility for once," Hina snapped. "You were making a name for yourself in Loguetown. No one made it through that port. No one. And did you think that the only ones who would notice were the people of Loguetown? Shutting down the East Blue entrance to the Grandline cut back on the small fish entering the route, and the big fish noticed. The people near the entrance to the Grandline noticed too."

She shook her her head, inhaled some toxins, and continued, "But you decide to up and throw their peace of mind away because you've got a yen for action. Special Ops kicked you out because you passed the age limit, and it pissed you off, so after a couple of years in Loguetown you decided to up and make up your own Special Ops mission, because you don't like to feel old. Am I right?"

That bitch! The HELL he was going to sit here and listen to this! 

If the room hadn't been so misted over with tobacco smoke, Smoker might very well have started seeing red. 

"Shut up!" Smoker glared a glare so powerful that it was said to make pirates handcuff themselves, and walk into lockup of their own free will. "You have no idea what you're talking about!"

And he was NOT old! Thirty-four was NOT an old age, goddamit! He could still kick ass with the best of them, hell, he WAS the best of them, and was that reason that he was the only person who could handle the threat of a loose cannon like Straw Hat in the first place! Jackass morons like Nelson couldn't tie their shoelaces without half of a battalion there to hold their hands. As far as Smoker was concerned, he was the only responsible one in the Marine Corps - not the other way around! Bashing pirate heads in solved alot more problems alot more directly than diplomatic nancing ever would. 

"You've never met the Monkey, or his crew," Smoker ground out. The trail of smoke from his cigars twisted threateningly, like the tail of an angry cat. "You haven't seen him. He's just like..."

Hina was apparently unfazed by this, "I don't have to have met Straw Hat. I've met you."

"I'm not going to let someone like that run wild over the blues," If Hina and his other old friends had been swayed into irrelevancy, that was fine. Smoker would do what had to be done. A man who laughed at death didn't just break the law - he broke all laws of human decency as well, and had no respect for life. "Not again."

"And I know there's no stopping you," Hina admitted, slumping against the wall. "But if you want to do this, you've got to give people something in return, even if this PR isn't very classy. If the Marines can't have you guarding the Grandline, then they need your reputation to help scare people off. That's the price you pay to live free, and also live within the law. So be a man and deal with it!"

... Smoker got the feeling that this wasn't a fight anymore. Not that either one of them was going to admit it. 

"Alright. Alright. Fine. So it's important that we find Tashigi and trot out like show-ponies for an hour. You still don't get to dictate to me what..."

"Sir!" A messenger barged in, hacked up half a lung in protest at being exposed to such cloudy, poisonous air, and then continued. "Ma'am. We've got news on the Lieutenant - Sergeant Zhou and his men found a witness to what may have happened to her. And we're pretty sure she's alive." 

"Excellent! Hina relieved," Hina smiled graciously, regaining her posture. How she did that with no sleep in the last thirty-six hours, and no clear evidence of coffee consumption, Smoker would never know. 

"Take me to him right away," she ordered. "We may salvage this thing yet."

Smoker stood as Hina started off to follow the private, and grabbed his coat off of the back of his chair. 

"Where do you think you're going?" Hina asked, from outside the cabin.

What, was she drunk or something? 

"To interrogate the witness," Smoker elaborated, as if to a small child.

Smoker was looking forward to breaking some kneecaps after the night he'd had. 

Hina laughed, the kind ominous chuckle that drove men to drink, "Don't be ridiculous Smoker."

Then she kicked the door shut, turned, and snapped her fingers. Not that he could hear the snap, per se, what with the mass of deadbolts, bars, and chains that descended upon his door and porthole at the same time. 

"This ceremony WILL go ahead," her voice was muffled by the door, as well as the inch-thick iron mesh that had joined it. "And until it does, I'm not dumb enough to let you go anywhere."

***

_"The only place you're going to is prison, pirate."_

_"You know what? I am so sick of this island. First I have to go through all that secret-handshakes crap merely to deal with Baroque Works, THEN my customer base dried up in a bloody revolution, and now I'm being assaulted by a rabid Marine. There has to be a better place to do business than this. Anywhere would be better than here."_

_"Put your hands in the air, or else I'll be forced to take action!"_

_"Whatever you say, lady."_

_"Good. Now start walking back to the dockyards. I don't want to see you making any sudden moves!"_

_"If I concentrate, to find the door as far from here as I can possibly reach, on another, better island..."_

_"I said MOVE!"_

_"What do you think I'm doing? If I concentrate, and focus all my will, I can do it, I can open...There!"_

_"That's it! What are you doing!? I'm afraid that I'm going to have to restrain you by force if you are going to act suspiciously. Don't think that I can't use this sword one-handed."_

_"Sorry, sweetheart. I've already written my ticket out of here."_

_"We'll see about that, criminal! There is no escaping justice!"_

_"Ms. Business! Watch out for that that pipe!"_

_"AAAAAAAH!!!!!"_

_"Hey, where'd that Marine lady disappear to...?"_

_"No. NO WAY. She can't have tripped into my portal. She's got my merchandise, and I don't even know where that door led to!"_

_  
"Did you hear that? The pirate did it! Run! Everyone run!!!"_

_"Captain Bell is going to KILL me."_

-TBC-

***

Author's note: These things just keep getting longer Oo;;; 

Exposition ahooooy! The finished version of this chapter contained more speechifying (especially on Hina's part) than I'd originally intended. C'est la vie?

Why am I saying that Smoker used to be a part of Special Ops? Clearly there's no direct canon proof of this, but in my twisted Mess-logic it seemed pretty likely. The job would suit him, I can't see him as ever having been a sort of aide-de-camp like Tashigi is, and (most importantly) he's been repeatedly described as an elite soldier from heaquarters. 

Like the whole Tashigi = Lieutenant thing, it's not canon... but it's not exactly against canon either. Just my interpretation of the background facts. 

Next chapter it's back to Tashigi-POV. Yay?   



	4. Shigure

**Chapter 04 - Shigure**

_He'd have to dive again, soon. _

_They always asked the smallest, first, and Behr was one of the smallest (thus were the trials of being ten.) He could get in between the columns of the reefs, and wedge himself in to the cracks in the seabed. He was nimble, too. Like a porpoise. His scrawniness would one day become a swimmer's build, whether he liked it or not._

_ Behr hated that. He hated it almost as much as he hated the water. _

_He hated the way that the waves knocked the wind out of him. He hated the way that the tide tried to tug him down and eat him. The sea wanted him. He wished it didn't. He hated the way that it chilled his flesh, and made his skin feel slimy, as if he were an eel or something even more subhuman. He hated the way that the fish would stare at him, never blinking, as if they were some sort of alien creatures that had no right to be living on the great red earth. He hated the way that the world went all muddy (even worse than the brown-green-grey of the village) when he put his dive goggles on, and the way that the stale air tasted in his throat as he sucked it down the breathing hose. He hated going down there. And he hated that he had to. _

_Behr was a particularly precocious ten, when it came to the development of grudges. Boredom and depression could do that to a boy. _

_But he would dive today, regardless. It was certain. He could sense it. The square was half-empty, and he could feel the moisture in the air as the grey sky frowned upon him. They'd want another dive before it started raining. _

_That was how things always happened. _

_Behr ducked beneath the canopy, and decided to wait out the dawn. The baker would be up first - Behr could get some fresh bread before all of the greedigut hoarders showed. He'd take it back to Mum and Da. And then he'd try to make himself as scarce as humanly possibly. Everyone understood why he didn't love what he was diving for, but no one understood how he hated the dive. In this village, they were water people. _

_Behr hoped for a miracle. A distraction. A hero to save him. Whatever. He was not set in his ways yet - he could afford to be flexible. The only bad habit he had was wishing for ways to stop them all from having to dive. Mum said that he had to dash that nonsense right out of his head, elsewise the currents would do it for him, and they all had a living to make from diving._

_Bad habits were hard to break. _

_Behr's heart skipped a beat, and he stood for a second. _

_Nothing. _

_He pulled his cap down lower, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and resolved to go about his business with a massive sulk. _

_They he saw the Lady in the Door. _

***

They'd stopped traveling nearly two years ago, but Tashigi swore that, if she concentrated, she could still feel the ground rocking back and forth beneath her feet. She'd spent nearly her whole life in and out of boats. 

Granted, she wasn't all that old yet. 

Sometimes she missed the sea. The travel hadn't been boring at all. There were a million dangerous ways to hang off of ropes or play with hooks on a passenger ship. And the sailors... they'd had all sorts of interesting things! Guns and axes and sometimes even _swords_, real-live honest-to-gosh-_swords_, that they'd let her mess around with! She knew that they usually only did it so that they could laugh at her, or so that she'd put in a good word for them with her mother, but she hadn't cared. Those had been fun games. They had been nice men. It made her sad that, invariably, every year, one or two of them would be gone because of the pirates, and she'd have to get to know their replacements all over again. She missed them, too. They were the closest thing she had to uncles. Why couldn't pirates leave people alone? 

Tashigi missed them even more now that Mom and her didn't do yearly rounds at all. She had no way of knowing if they were even alive.

And. There was nothing _nearly _as fun to play with in this boring old city. All of the Marine swords were uniform and uninteresting, and they thought she was joking when she wanted to borrow them. That wasn't any fun at all! Neither was her school. Mom had stopped playing in the smaller villages and gotten a permanent gig in one of the city clubs, because Tashigi was apparently getting old enough that she needed to get an education. But everything that they taught in school was so boring! Why did she need to learn any of this? Tashigi tried her hardest, but she couldn't help it if she didn't _care_ about music or literature or dancing (especially dancing.) She didn't understand why they couldn't read history about battlefields rather than poetry about landscapes, or learn accuracy through archery rather than needlepoint. Those things didn't involve having big arms to tie knots or steer rudders at all. They could be for girls too. 

Tashigi had the sneaking suspicion that, while they'd been traveling, Mom had forgotten to teach her how to be a girl, and was now trying to make up for lost time. Tashigi wished she wouldn't bother. All of the girls she met at school liked really lame things. 

Tashigi unlocked the door to their cramped rowhouse, and dropped her bookbag haphazardly by the door before toeing off her patent-leather Mary-Janes. Tashigi knew that her mother worked very hard to support them, and therefore treated most of the clothing she hated (including: school uniform complete with skirt, trendy/bland black-and-white frock dresses, and all of her barrettes except for the ones with the ponies on them) with a grudging respect. But the Mary-Janes were singled out for a special heel-destroying ire. Those dumb shoes had no grip. She was sure that that was why she had started slipping so much lately. She'd started getting taller too, and Mom had begun to make threatening noises about buying her a bra, but Tashigi liked to ignore that and blame the footwear. A few more months and she'd be consigned to dancing singing needle-pointing girldom _forever, _with no hope for a stay of execution whatsoever. It was too awful to contemplate. So she didn't. 

"MOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!! I'M HOOOOOOOMMMMME!" Tashigi yelled, kicking her schoolbooks out of the way and into their sitting-room/dining-room/kitchen. 

There was no answer. 

"MOM!!!?" 

Still no answer. The door creaked shut. 

Tashigi smiled. Then she bolted up the stairs. 

The only thing that made up for having to live in the boring city, and that was having her very own room to hide things in. She had a futon, and a window, and a shelf, and a dresser too. There were lots of dresses in the dresser. She never wore the dresses, so it was easy to shove things she wasn't supposed to have under them. Tashigi felt really guilty about keeping things from her mother there, but... she tried really hard at school and followed all the rules, because respecting the rules was important, so it was a fair trade, right? She wasn't going against her mother's wishes. She was only not telling her what she was doing! Yeah! That was completely different. 

Or at least that was what she told herself. Anyway, she shouldn't spend so much time thinking about being guilty about it. She could do that at school, or when Mom was _home_. This was a golden opportunity to get some reading done. Tashigi couldn't wait! It had been a whole four days and if she didn't finish that last chapter soon she would _explode_. 

Tashigi made a hairpin turn at the top of the stairs, and slammed open the door to her room. It looked exactly like the door to her Mom's room, except it had a paper with her name and a picture of a sea monster taped to it. Sea monsters were cool, except when they ate people. Tashigi had decided, however, that her sea monster was a _good_ sea monster, so it only ate bad sea monsters and sometimes fish. 

"I found these in your dresser," a quiet voice broke her reverie.   


Mom was in her room. 

She had opened the door, and _Mom was in her room_. 

And her dresser was open, her dresses all pulled out, frilly girly boring pastels that her mother called 'classy' tossed around the room like they'd been caught in a small tornado. 

Mom was in her room, and had rumpled up all of the dresses she loved, and she was holding Tashigi's books, and this was all very very wrong. 

Tashigi froze. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. There was a bird on the streetlamp outside her window. If she did not look at her mother, then she could meet its eyes. 

"Tashigi?" her mother snapped, quivering with rage. Her hand pointed to a small stack of books scattered on Tashigi's futon. Her mother's nails were long, and blood-red, to go with the pretty yellow-and-crimson-and-orange embroidered dress she wore for the Thursday show. In the half-light of late afternoon, they looked like claws. 

"Young lady, you _look_ at me when I am talking to you," the claw reached down and grabbed her chin, forcing Tashigi to look up at the force of nature looming over her. "Where did you get these!?" 

"I bought them," Tashigi steeled her jaw, and struggled to remain calm. She would take her punishment like a sailor, or a swordsman. She wasn't going to try and doe-eye her way out of this, like a girl. "From the bookshop on Oleander Street."

"With what bellies?" her mother spat. 

"I sweep up, and dust the shelves in the evening after lessons," Tashigi's voice was beginning to shake. "Miss Blackburne gives me books in exchange."

The girl's face was released, as her mother turned back to the offending material. 

" _Named Swords of the South Blue_? _He Who Cuts Last Cuts Best: A Guide to Coping with Multi-Sword Attacks_?" Tashigi's mother Tashigi's books up one by one, scanned the titles, and then hurled them to the floor. "_Learn to Handle a Cutlass in Thirty Days_? _A Bladespotter's Handbook_? This is not appropriate reading material for a young lady!!!"

"Miss Blackburne says it's fine! It's not dirty or violent or anything! I just read... I haven't touched a weapon, I swear!" Tashigi protested desperately. 

"Miss Blackburne is not your mother! What is this? What do you think you're doing?" the words caught in her mother's throat. Like they had to tear their way out. Like she was tearing up. "How could you think you could hide these from me?"

"I thought... I didn't think you'd be so angry," Tashigi backed away, into the doorway. What she'd _thought_ was that she'd read up on everything until she got really good at knowing things about swords, and then she'd teach herself how to use one, and impress Mom with how good she was, so then Mom wouldn't be mad at her and would instead let her take lessons at the local dojo, and they'd both be really happy and Mom would be so proud. But Tashigi didn't think. She never did. She had known that Mom hated everything to do with stuff like weapons. And now she'd ruined everything. "You spend so much time with the show. And you've paid for lessons, but I'm no good at singing or dancing or painting or anything. I like reading."

"Don't you make me feel guilty about my job. I spend all time with the show to keep you fed! To give you opportunities! To keep you SAFE! Don't you EVER forget that!"

There was silence, before her blood roared to her ears. Tashigi could feel her face stinging. 

Her mother had slapped her. 

Her mother had never slapped her before. 

Was Mom crying? 

She was. Mom was crying. And Tashigi hadn't meant... oh, she was so messed up, she wasn't a proper girl at all, and it was all her fault, boyfriends came and went but she was all Mom had, and Mom was all she had, and how did Tashigi repay her? By messing everything up. By not being good at anything she was supposed to be good at. 

The bird on the streetlamp had flown away, but Tashigi could no longer see it. She'd taken off her glasses in order to wipe her eyes. 

By the time Tashigi was sure that she could speak without sobbing, her mother had left.

***

_Tashigi stumbled, and caught herself before she fell to the ground - though her bowlegged attempt at stability was far from graceful. She closed her eyes and willed the world to stop spinning, all the while wondering at the nausea creeping up from her gut. What was this? Her falls weren't like this. _

_The sky was grey and pregnant with rain. She was standing on a porch or a stoop of some kind, in a village all of wood, that stretched out in all directions over the water of a great bay. The buildings and walkways themselves were all held up by stilts, like a large and intricate dock. Some kid was staring at her from a walkway, his jaw hanging wide open. _

_Tashigi knew the feeling. She was confused too. Hell, her mental state had moved on to a place beyond mere confusion. She didn't know exactly what or where that place was, mind you... but that was kind of to be expected in a beyond-confusing situation. This was all very surreal. _

_Tashigi became even more confused when the boy started grinning. _

***

"Mom... " Tashigi tiptoed down the hall, as if her silence could somehow make everything calm back down again.

"Mom?" she opened the door to her mother's room by a crack. When the sky did not proceed to fall in on her, she edged her way carefully inside. "I'll... I'll throw them all away. I promise. If it'll make you feel better."

"It's not your fault, sweetie," Mom was sitting at her vanity, as she stared unseeing into her large mirror. Her hands picked idly at tubes of makeup and strings of fake pearls she'd strewn around the vanity's surface. "I know that I'm not being fair."

Her mother stayed out late alot. That was what singers did, and that was what boyfriends did too. But her mother never ran out of energy - she thrived on her work. So Tashigi could not understand why her mother sounded dead tired at five in the afternoon.   


"So I can keep them?" Her mother still wouldn't look at her, but Tashigi couldn't help being hopeful anyway. Maybe... maybe Mom was only tired. Then it would be easier to put things right. Tashigi had to make her pitch now, or never. "I promise, they won't get in the way. I only read them when I'm not in school or lessons and I'll take really good care of them and I've memorized half of them anyway, so we could throw them out and only keep the others, and they wouldn't even take up much room. Give me a chance. I'll make it okay. .... Please?"

Her mother sighed. Her eyes, staring at Tashigi from the mirror, were flat, and dripped black mascara. Her smile was small and bitter, its lining smudged coral-red. "You really can't help being like him, can you?"

Who...?

Oh.

"I don't want to be. I'm not trying to be," Tashigi struggled to explain. She was crying again, so it was hard for her to make her voice clear. It was lonely, standing by the doorway. It made her feel small. "I don't know him, and I hope I never do! He hurt you so much you had to leave him. I don't want to be someone who you can't love. I wish... I wish I didn't have to have a father! I don't even need one!"

"No. No... shhhh, sweetie, it's alright," suddenly life returned to Tashigi's mother, who knelt to the floor and hugged her. Her voice was low and soft, and her shoulder was too, so it was easy for Tashigi to sob into it. Tashigi's hands clutched at the back of her mother's dress. "I didn't mean it that way. You don't have to hate him. It's not your fault. I'm just... upset. I received some bad news in a letter from your father today, and I took it out on you. I've known about those books for months. I was hoping you'd grow out of them."

Her mother was hugging her tighter, like she was afraid that Tashigi was going to try and escape. Tashigi had sniffed back her tears, and was about to speak, before her mother continued. 

"When I left your father, I had to leave something with him that was very precious to me," said Tashigi's mother, her voice raw and distant. Like she was faded. Failing. "The only thing in this world as valuable to me as you are. It wouldn't have been fair to take the both of you from him."

"But he lost it," her mother's voice faltered. She was running a hand through Tashigi's hair. Tashigi's scalp was beginning to hurt. She didn't know what her mother was talking about, but she _did_ know better than to ask.

"That bastard let it BREAK."

***

_Behr couldn't believe it... the Lady in the Door had just appeared, like they were in a story! It must be for a reason! She'd appeared and she stood there - her clothes so bright, her sword all shining in the sunrise, looking pensive and heroic and completely out of place in his drab brown village full of fish guts and rickety diving boats. The light from the oil lamps in the store behind her gave her a slight gold halo. That was a katana she had, wasn't it? A katana! And treasure! Like a knight errant, or a samurai; world-weary and wise. _

_Behr bet that knights and samurai NEVER had to go in the water. _

_"You came," Behr said. "You really, really came!"_

***

"Sit right there," Tashigi's mother released her, and set her up on the vanity stool. "I have something for you."

Tashigi was still not sure if she should speak. 

"When I left your father, I had to let him keep something of mine that I valued. So he let me keep something he valued, too," Mom opened her wardrobe, and dropped to her knees so that she could rummage around behind all of the sequined skirts and feather boas. "I want you to have it."

From the deep dark recesses of the cabinet, under a jungle's worth of brightly-colored silks, a dirty-looking bundle of brown sackcloth emerged. That was... as confusing as most of this day had been. Tashigi couldn't imagine her mother even _touching_ something like that, let alone wearing it. 

When the bundle was placed in her lap, it became apparent that this was not something a person would wear. It was too heavy.

"Unwrap it," Mom leaned against a wall, drew a cigarette from the pack on her desk, and looked at it as though it were mana from heaven. The sigh of relief was audible when she lit up.

Tashigi carefully drew back the covers, and time seemed to slow down as she caught a glint of steel under the earth-dull packaging. It was silver - flowed like water. It tapered to an edge so fine it could cut the stars out of the sky. 

The girl heard herself gasp.

"It has a name. It's called Shigure."

"It's beautiful," Tashigi wondered, not daring to take her eyes off of the gorgeous thing that Mom had placed in her lap. She was almost afraid to touch it. If she did, it might disappear in a flash of light or a puff of smoke. That was the kind of thing that happened with dreams, or mirages. Named swords were sort of like... devil fruits, or Sea Lords. Everyone knew that they existed, but it seemed crazy to imagine them anywhere outside of storybooks. "Why would you..."

"When I left your father, he got to keep something of mine. So I got to keep something precious to him, too. Like I told you," her mother sighed, a sigh larger than normal life-sized sigh. Larger than life. It was wry and bitter and angry and sad all at the same time. Mom really was fit for the stage - you could see the point she was getting at from any seat in the house. "He had two. That was the style he practiced, you know - two swords. But he stopped fighting in order to teach, after you were born. So he didn't need them anymore."

She laughed grimly, and exhaled a smoke ring, "He was never much of a fighter anyway."

"I thought you might turn out like me, but it didn't take. I can't keep denying that any longer. I have to stop before it's too late," Tashigi's mother stabbed her cigarette out in the crystal ashtray, and walked over to sit on the edge of the vanity. Tashigi didn't notice. She was still staring at the sword. "Sweetie, I want you to do whatever you like with this. And if that means that you want to start learning how to use it, then I won't be angry with you. I didn't leave your father because he was a swordsman. And I would _never_ have trusted him with anything I cared about, if I thought he was a bad man. I left him... because he wanted me to stop singing, and stay home to be the proper sensei's wife. That was a role I just couldn't play."

A hand intruded Tashigi's line of vision, and she look up, startled. Mom smiled down at her. 

"I'm not going to ask you to make the same choice that I had to make. You'll never be someone who I can't love."

"Really?" Tashigi gathered to courage to run her finger along the edge of the blade. It felt like steel, and cold, and perfect. If there was such a thing as that. 

"Really truly," Tashigi's mother ruffled her hair, and then gently pushed her out of the makeup stool. Tashigi cradled the swaddled sword in her arms, as if it would shatter. "Now why don't you go put those books on your shelf, hmm? I have to pull myself together for rehearsal tonight. You can hand me the powder on your way out."

And then Mom was a whirlwind of activity, wiping her face off and putting a new face on, curling her eyelashes and pinning up her hair and all doing all of the things Tashigi usually thought of as boring mom-stuff in an impossible ten minutes. 

The moment was over, but a new era had begun. 

***

_Tashigi blinked. By this point she was too worn out physically and emotionally to be susceptible to panic. _

_"Um, sure. Okay. Hey!" she tried to keep the fatigue out of her voice. "Can you tell me where this is?"_

_"The Devil's Garden," the boy replied. "But you knew that. And I won't have to dive today. 'Cause you're like a samurai! With a katana! that sword is SO AMAZING... the only things we have her are stupid fish harpoons."_

_.... _

_Hooboy. _

_Weren't these the sorts of things that ought to happen to Captain Smoker? He was good at defeating things, and confusion was against his religion (or at least, if he had a religion, then it would be.)_

_Tashigi just wanted to go to bed. _

***

Tashigi had looked up Her Shigure in her brand-new copy of _A Bladespotter's Handbook_, and it was a named sword! It was! It was in the BOOK, and it had a NAME, and it was a SWORD, and it was SO PERFECT, it made her giddy just to hold it. 

She'd already cut her hand once. She hoped that Mom had the money to buy a scabbard. 

Tashigi dashed back over to her mother's room (Tashigi, being an energetic child, was rarely out of full-throttle motion) to share the joy. Mom needed cheering up because her valuable heirloom broke. Luckily swords didn't break, or else Tashigi might have to be sad too! Except she wasn't, so she could cheer Mom up, and then everyone would be happy and it would be so great! Then they could go to dinner and buy a scabbard and after work Mom would help Tashigi decide what sword style she wanted to learn how to use! Not that Mom knew anything about sword styles, but Tashigi had no one else to talk to about it, and the idea that she, TASHIGI, might practice a real SWORD STYLE was so incredibly mind-blowingly amazing that if she didn't talk about to someone she knew she'd probably have to start accosting strangers on the street about it. 

Mom looked great. Her cheeks were rosy with powder. Even her eyes had been artificially brightened, with a touch of white liner. 

It was amazing, what you could do with makeup. Tashigi knew that her mother was faking it. If she'd really been all that happy, then she would have already been out the door and preparing for the night's show. Mom loved her work. 

"I know how to cheer you up!" Tashigi chirped. She had had an epiphany. 

"Sweetie?" her mother was playing with a string of beads, and staring at stuff again. Tashigi was beginning to worry about the blank staring. That wasn't like Mom.

"I was worried, but now I'm not," Tashigi flounced in, trying - and failing - to hold Her Shigure in only one hand. When her strength failed her, she leaned it up against the wall. Hopefully it wouldn't cut the hardwood and get her in trouble. 

Tashigi's hands met Tashigi's hips, and she made her pronouncement. "I'm not going to be like my father at all! I'm not going to hide in some dumb dojo telling people what to do for no good reason. A sword like Shigure is too beautiful to keep hidden away! It's meant to be used and appreciated! I could never forgive someone who would wrong a sword like this, by not letting it reach its full potential."

Tashigi's mother had stopped looking depressed, and started looking leery. Well, at least her pupils were moving. That was progress! Tashigi took the signs of life as leave to continue.

"That's why, when I'm old enough... I'm going to join the Marines!"

"You're going to WHAT!?!" her mother squawked, dropping her string of beads and clutching at her hear like she's been stricken with an arrow. Silly Mom! 

"Tashigi, sweetie, I know you're excited, but don't make any rash decisions," her mother babbled, "You'll... you'll be surrounded by strange crude men and dangerous pirates! And there are storms at sea, and horrid monsters - terrible things you'll never see here in Redline. Surely you can't be serious!"

Oh. Okay. Tashigi got it now. Mom shouldn't be so sensitive and nervous. Tashigi was a person who could take care of herself, not some heirloom Mom had left her father! ... Tashigi guessed that worrying was just a Mom thing to do. 

"Don't worry Mom. You won't have to be sad again."

Tashigi stepped to pick Her Shigure back up, when suddenly a crack in the floor mysteriously rose to trip her into the wall. Her head met the edge of the wardrobe with a sickening crack. 

The girl lay sprawled on the floor, a trickle of blood wending its way down her temple. She was still as death. 

Her mother shrieked. 

And then, ignoring the pain, the girl struggled up into a crouch, and grinned. She brushed her hair away from her temple, and took a speculative lick at the blood on her hands. 

"See? I'm different. I won't break. I'll be stronger."

-TBC-

***

**Author's Note**: Ah, yes. The inevitable Kuina Issue chapter. As is obvious by this point, I'm a firm subscriber to the Twin Theory of their relationship. Tashigi just... isn't Kuina, personality-wise. Frankly, I think she (and, by extension, the Zoro/Tashigi rivalry) would be much less interesting if she _was_ Kuina. Plus it'd kind of trash Zoro's character motivations. 

Gah. This was entirely too sappy. . It's just that Shigure is a big part of the story, so that had to be explained, and it's hard to write a main character who has no defined backstory to refer to. So I needed to make one up. 

The final line is something that I've had in my head for weeks, and the primary (but not sole) inspiration for the title of this fic. 

Next up: Zen Smoker, Tashigi gets some sleep, and another Oda-created character is added to the cast (hint: it's not Shanks. Or a Straw Hat Pirate. Or, uh, anyone who's dead.)


	5. The Alternative

**Stronger 05 - The Alternative**

Hina was rather fond of her crew. 

"THIS IS NOT OVER, HINA!"

She knew that Smoker had a less-than-high opinion of certain members of her staff. Private Fullbody, for example, spent more time taking care of his hair than Smoker was comfortable contemplating. In Smoker's universe men did not know what moisturizing conditioner was, and if they did, they were embarrassed about it. 

Jango was also proving to a be a problem for Smoker. Due to Hina's extensive experience in dealing with difficult Marines, Headquarters had a tendency to send her the wierdos and the troublemakers. 

Hina didn't mind. Smoker could go hang himself from the mainsail. The insane Marines were the ones who made life interesting. 

Hmph. Besides. At least _her_ crew wasn't full of jarheads too afraid to let their commander out of something so trivial as a locked office. 

"I ORDER SOMEONE TO LET ME OUT OF HERE! THAT MEANS _YOU_, HINA! I'M PULLING FUCKING RANK!!!!"

Smoker's crew was making itself understandably scarce. That was not a problem for her own men. 

"Another gin and tonic, Captain Hina ma'am?" 

"Stop crowding Captain Hina, Fullbody! Maybe she would prefer a moist towlette!" 

"I.. I didn't think, Jango! I am so sorry, Captain Hina, ma'am! Would you prefer a moist towlette? Or perhaps an iced lemon drink?"

"DO YOU HEAR ME!???!? RANK, HINA! RANK!"

"That will be quite enough," Hina nodded to her lackeys, who had materialized as soon as she exited Smoker's office. 

"Of course, Captain Hina ma'am!" Fullbody was carrying her briefcase, and also a parasol in case she wished for shade, and also a fan in case she was feeling hot. ... Perhaps she was letting this get a little out of hand. "That brute must have ruined your appetite for the day."

"Jangoooooooooooooooo," Jango did an odd little pirouette, in what appeared to be an attempt to cheer her up. 

Hina ignored the both of them, and set out on her way. They'd follow her, naturally, but if they were _encouraged _she'd never get anything done. One word of approval from Hina and there'd be a professional-grade tango exhibition waiting for her in the dockyards. 

Goodness knew how they found the time and energy for choreography. Life at lea was hard and laborious. Hina would have put a stop to it, had she not felt that her crew's new hobby was a healthy team-building activity. 

"ARE YOU STILL THERE? HINA? HINA!!?? FUCKING HELL!!!"

Smoker's howls provided a wonderfully melodic counterpoint Jango and Fullbody's sycophantic scramblings. Hina was not sure if the pair were genuinely (if clumsily) besotted with her, or if they were merely drastically overcompensating in an attempt to hide their own sessions of horizontal disco. 

Fortunately, she had no real reason to care. 

Hina scoured her pocket for new cigarettes. Fullbody handed her a fresh pack. The messenger from Smoker's underling was pretending not to hear his Captain, while he led her off to solve the mystery of their missing young Lieutenant. Smoker's shouting had subsided but there were loud smashing sounds coming from his cabin. 

Hina stifled a laugh with her glove. This day was looking up.

***

This day was definitely not looking up. 

The humid air was a shock to Tashigi's system. She could feel the dew on her skin, and the water pooling in her throat. Dark clouds and a choppy sea threatened rain. The village itself was built on platforms over the water, which was halted abruptly by the legion of rich green palms that stood sentinel at the shoreline. The trees of their island (island?) stretched up and out and endless, radiating a sinister heat. She could see why they chose to live on the ocean. 

There was no way that a rainforest like this could logically be in Albasta. There was also no way that she could logically NOT be in Albasta. 

Sometimes, it seemed like the Grandline took personal pleasure in torturing those who sailed it. Did this happen to pirates, too? Or was it the malevolent will of Gold Roger, that cursed Marines who entered his waters be made to pay a toll blood? 

"Where are you taking me?" Tashigi asked the young boy clinging to her hand, who was leading her the docks at an alarming pace (at least holding on to another person kept Tashigi from falling into the water. It looked unwelcoming, and full of vegetation. This must be some kind of bay.) His grip was so solid that he might as well have been some new, undiscovered species of mollusk. A mollusk dressed in shabby brown overalls, with sandy blonde hair. 

Tashigi was no marine biologist, but she was pretty sure that such a thing wasn't natural. Still, she couldn't bring herself to break the kid's mood. It was so nice to see children taking interest in wholesome activities, like helping travelers, instead of doing disturbing things like idolizing pirates or becoming involved in youth gangs. She'd read something in the intel reports about this "Usopp" character establishing just such a criminal enterprise in his hometown. It was appalling what those pirates would do. It was one thing to harass adults, but Tashigi could not forgive anyone who would lure innocent children away from the right side of the law!!! Disgusting rabble. Roronoa Zoro was _exactly_ the kind of person who would associate with such a scumbag. 

"We're going to the Mayor's!!!" Tashigi could hear the boy smiling. "Everyone will be so excited to meet you, and I'll get out of diving today for sure!"

Tashigi stubbed her toe, and hopped a bit so as to not pitch off of the pier. The kid did not notice. 

"Diving?" Ooooh, Tashigi hoped that _she_ wouldn't be diving. She would have to be extra-careful on these walkways. She could swim (it had been a necessary skill to acquire, considering her unlucky tendency to fall out of warships... and yachts... and sailboats... and small buildings... ) but her Shigure would weigh her down, and she had a chest full of Devil's Fruit to think of. If she lost the fruit, then she would have no evidence against that pirate! 

Er, not that she and Captain Smoker ever _needed _evidence, but it was the principle of the thing. 

"Yeah. We have to dive for things on the bottom of the ocean, or else we starve," the boy grumbled. "Sometimes we trade the food we find there for other food that isn't gross and slimy from being underwater."

"Oh," said Tashigi, profoundly. 

"So what do you do?" Tashigi was ushered around a corner, and towards a larger-looking hit. It had cleaner thatch, and its platform was painted. "Is it really really cool? I bet it is, right? Do you get to travel and go on adventures? I bet you see lots of neat places!" 

"I'm a Marine," Tashigi explained, not wishing to misrepresent life at sea. Thoughts of adventure tempted too many young people into piracy! They had to be taught that the best adventure was the kind that could be enjoyed with a clean conscience. Otherwise, perfectly good little boys transformed into sleazy, untrustworthy, chauvinistic_ men_. "I fight to promote justice."

Well... alright, that wasn't entirely true. Tashigi also fought because swords were used in fighting, and she would just whither and _die _if she didn't get to use her sword. Swords were at their most beautiful when they were being used in a battle - flush with life and flashing with violence. In a way, she guessed that she had inherited her mother's love of the theater. There was nothing so graceful as the arc of a falling katana, no music so powerful as the sound of steel on steel. You couldn't find costumes more exotic and entrancing than the wild garb of pirates and bounty-hunters, with their elaborate-scabbards and lovingly-wrapped hilts. Certainly, there was no climax more satisfying than bringing a pirate into the custody of the law. 

Ummm... not that the kid needed to know that. 

"So... that means you fight _pirates_?" the boy stopped suddenly, his big blue eyes wide as saucers. They seemed to have reached their destination. 

"Of course!" Tashigi pulled back, surprised and slightly indignant. 

"This is GREAT!"

The 'greatness' did not stop the boy from unceremoniously shoving Tashigi through the Mayor's door. 

***

Smoker had stopped yelling a good hour and a half back. If his crew had yet to retrieve him by that point, odds were they weren't going to acknowledge his situation at all. 

... when he got out of his office, there was going to be RETRIBUTION. Those sissies wouldn't know what hit them. There would be drills. Oh yes, there would be drills. And drudgery. And pain. Maybe, by the end of it, those ladies would be MAN enough to unlock a fucking door! He couldn't believe that those sad, wilting little girlyboys were too afraid of a small show of temper to run for a welding torch. 

Fucking hell. If Tashigi were around, he'd have been out of this hole an hour ago.

Smoker frowned, from his seat in an overstuffed armchair. This was not the way to accomplish his goal. Sweet vengeance would have to come later. This was a time for action. 

His eyes were closed. His breathing slowed, and then stopped. He was trying to focus on the lapping sound of waves against the hull, so that he would not hear his heartbeat. 

The Devil in him did not have a heartbeat. There could be no tightness in its nonexistent chest, as it had no need of oxygen. It scoffed at rest. It scorned all food. It thought touch an inconvenience. Indeed, it had no need of flesh. The Devil in him was muzzled by the force of habit.

Form was its prison. 

And the Devil he was hated prisons. So Smoker was going to break out. 

It was easier to forget who he was supposed to be (had been, had thought himself to be, before he'd made his choice and signed his pact and renounced his good name for something else. Smoker wasn't a name for a _person_, printed on birth-certificates and argued-over by nervous parents. Smoker was the name of the Devil he'd once aspired to be) in the heat of battle. He pictured what he had to do to win, and then he did it. That was all there was to it. He didn't have to go through all of this stupid-assed zen crap in order to be a column of smoke in the shape of a man. 

Sadly, being a column of smoke in the shape of a column of smoke was another matter entirely. Especially when there was no heat of battle to melt into. Smoker was a very physical person. He liked: getting drunk, hitting things, riding fast, and the taste of blood and vinegar. He did not like being a bodiless, formless cloud. When he thought of it _that _way, it almost seemed like he had a wussy stealth power.

Fucking Devil Fruit. Fucking irony. Fuck it. 

Hina was slipping. She hadn't plugged up all the cracks. He could feel every curve and contour of the room through the thick white mist of his awareness - and there were spaces between the floorboards that an enterprising cloud of smoke could slip through, if he could stop being pissed off long enough to forget the shape he thought of himself as, and remember the devil he actually was. 

"Fuck this," Smoker heard himself curse. Which meant that he still had a mouth. 

"AUUUGH! GodDAMN it!"

This was going to take a while. 

Still, he was damned if he was going to let HINA win this. Goddamn Hina. Goddamn Albasta. SMOKER WOULD NOT BE DEFEATED.

Deep breaths. 

Deep breaths.

His eyes were closed. His breathing slowed, and then stopped... 

***

The hut was very.... clean. Mostly because it was also very... empty. 

Tashigi didn't like to say mean things about good people. Maybe the owner of this place was poor or non-materialistic! It would not be very nice to think awful things about his or her shabby-looking quarters, decorated with only a few sticks of furniture and a battered-looking stove. It was sad to see the state that some of these underpopulated areas were in. 

Tashigi was sat down on a venerable-looking wooden chair by an elderly woman in a grey shawl. The lady was wiry, with a shock of hair like steel wool and skin worn to the consistency of well-worn parchment. Maybe she wasn't so old, after all. That was the kind of age a person earned, not the kind that a person grew into. 

"This is Tashigi and she's a Marine with a big sword and you can't make me dive today!" the kid babbled, running around the room. Just watching him tired Tashigi out. She stowed her box under the chair and leaned against the woman's kitchen table gratefully.

"Behr? Slow down, son..." said the woman, who was giving Tashigi a Look. It wasn't quite a Look of Death, but it was definitely a look of suspicion. It bothered Tashigi to have an innocent civilian look at her like that. She wondered how the pirates stood it. " On second thought, why don't you run and fetch some firewood, hmm?"

"But I wanna..."

"NOW, Behr."

Oh no! What if the woman had seen her sword, and thought she was a pirate!

The kid stalked out. 

"So," Tashigi cleared her throat, "Behr tells me that you're the Mayor of this town? It's very nice to meet you. I'm Second-Lieutenant Tashigi, of the East Blue Marine Armada."

There. That should clear things up. Tashigi would understand, if the woman did not trust her - Tashigi carried no proof of her position - but she hoped that her conduct would eventually be evidence enough of her good intentions. 

"I'm terribly sorry," the woman instantly brightened. Wonderful! Clearly the Marines had kept their good name in this stretch of the Blue. "Has Behr been bothering you? We don't get many visitors on an island as remote as this. I must admit, I was wondering what a young lady like you was doing in a place like this. But it makes sense that a Marine would show up here."

It did?

"Yeah," Tashigi stalled, while the Mayor started puttering around in her cupboards. The hinges squeaked, and the porcelain handles were chipped. "I've been traveling, and I got a little... lost."

"Don't you worry, young lady," the Mayor smiled. "We'll get you set right in no time."

"Thanks so much! I really don't want to impose, but if you happen to have a phone handy..."

A part of her hoped that they did not have a phone handy. The same part that told her if she made that call the whole wide world would come crashing down on her. The sky looked heavy. It could fall. You never knew - and Tashigi, more than most, was aware that accidents were bound and determined to happen. What if she called and Captain Smoker didn't want to have anything to do with her because she was weak, and he'd only kept her around before because he felt sorry for her, and now that she was gone he was happier? What if they demoted her back to private for going AWOL during an important mission? She'd deserve that. What if... what if...

Tashigi just wanted to go to sleep and forget that the world existed. But her thoughts were racing too fast for the rest of her to slow down. 

"Certainly. You just sit yourself down. If you don't mind my saying so, dearie, you look _awfully_ tired. While you're making your call I'll get you a nice cup of tea."

Oh... good. 

***

Smoker's underling had brought the witness to the brig of Hina's flagship. He'd hadn't been happy about letting the witness go, but Hina had been forced to insist that Omar be relinquished. Goodness knew what would happen to the man if he were left to the nonexistent mercies of Smoker's crew. 

Smoker would have threatened to personally beat their witness until he talked. Hina liked to think that she took a slightly less crass approach. 

"Fullbody, hit him," Hina gestured from her seat. Jango had remembered to bring her folding chair, which was very thoughtful of him, since this was really quite the show. Of course she was not going to actually have Fullbody hit Omar. The Albastan government had little reason to trust the Marines, since the Marines had abandoned them to Crocodile. They could very well throw a fit if one of their civilians was roughed up the Marines. 

... yet this Omar fellow did not know that. He looked about to soil himself. 

Hina amused. 

"My pleasure, ma'am," Fullbody cracked his steel knuckles, and then pulled back his right fist. 

"I swear," their witness shuddered, "I'm telling you the truth..."

"Ma'am?" Fullbody looked askance at Hina. 

Well. So that was how their witness was going to play it, was it? 

"Do you know what we Marines like to call it when people LIE to us?" Hina flicked the ashes from her cigarette, her voice cold and measured. 

Hina liked to be amused. It was one of the reasons she had joined the Marines, and she felt that it gave her a positive outlook that helped with her job. She could make the best of any odd working situation. 

When Hina was NOT amused, brave men trembled. 

"When people lie to us, we call it obstruction of justice," said Hina. "Do you know what the penalty for obstruction of justice is?"

The witness' whimpers grew high-pitched and insistent, "I didn't put her anywhere. The pirate made a magic door. I told you... I told you that..."

"With all due respect, Captain, I really doubt that this guy _could_ have put the Lieutenant anywhere," said Fullbody, lowering his fist to smooth back his hair. 

" I know that. But he has to be covering for whoever did," Hina stood, looming over the chained-up prisoner. "A _magic door_? Really. Who says such a ridiculous thing to a Marine fleet-captain? _Who_!? What kind of lie is that? Do I look _slow_ to you, Mr.Omar?"

Omar's manacles tightened menacingly. 

"Captain Hina?" Jango interrupted, gliding through the door to the brig. Ugh. The sunlight stung her eyes. "Switchboooooard. Someone's on the telephone for you."

Hina swore under her breath. They were operating under time constraints, here! 

"I'll take it in my office." 

***

_*ring*_

Hina nearly flinched when she walked into the office. The phone was ringing. Goddamn phone. She would be perfectly happy if she never had to touch another shell receiver ever again. Wasn't that what communications officers were for? 

Hina's newfound dislike of telephone communication was no mere phobia: it was an ingrained response to negative stimulus. She had spent weeks after the Execution Tower Incident fielding panicked, uncomprehending phonecalls. 

Her colleagues hadn't been able to comprehend what the hell Smoker was doing, and they were too smart to call him directly. So they bothered her about it instead. 

_*ring*_

Hina could see why they did it, though that understanding certainly did not make things much more pleasant. 

There was nothing new about Marines giving in to the lure of power and disregarding official directives. There were outposts in every Blue ruled by petty little men, leading petty little lives, taking what petty little pleasure they could from turning their posts into tiny fiefdoms. They were like smalltime Armed Seas, with none of the majesty and all of the ugliness. Headquarters kept their abuses from getting out of hand, and, in turn, they kept peace in their insignificant puddles of water so that the real Marines had time to go about more important business. Their unspoken arrangements with Headquarters were a fact of Marine life. 

... Smoker, however, did not _make_ arrangements. Smoker was no Major from some backwater rock. Smoker was the fleet commander of Loguetown - the symbolic home of global disorder and one of the four gateways to the Grandline. Smoker was the White-goddamn-Hunter, a veritable bogeyman to many of the lesser pirates of the East Blue. Smoker was not a person whom Headquarters could control unless he wanted to be controlled. 

And it had seemed that he no longer wanted to be controlled. 

_*Ring* _

Still on the line? Really... ought she to have issued a _fax bulletin _about Smoker's actions post-Straw-Hat? Hopefully news of this ceremony would get everyone off of Smoker's back - and, by virtue of association, off of hers. 

People in the know from all over Grandline and East Blue had absolutely no idea what to think of Smoker's disobedience. Had Hina not possessed more class than sense, she would have told them that she was not Smoker's goddamn receptionist, and ended the questioning before it even began. 

Had Smoker gone rogue? Was he still a Marine? Was he a pirate? Would he try to gather a crew and make a run for a position among the Armed Seas? Did he know what he was doing? Had he gone mad? Had he always been mad? What was up with this Straw Hat kid, anyway? Did Smoker not know how important Loguetown was? Did he not care how important Loguetown was? Would he attack any Marine ships that got in his way? Was it worth the trouble to get in his way? Did Hina know which way he was going? Could Hina maybe convince him not to go towards them? Had he opened up the gateway to the Grandline on purpose, in some grand Gold Roger-esque gesture of exasperation with the system? What were his political aims? Was this an attempt to blackmail Headquarters into giving him his Commodore's star? 

... these questions and more had been Hina's pleasure to answer ten times a day, every day, for more days than she cared to think about. Ugh. There was nothing worse than a gibbering Marine. 

_*Ring*_

Persistent fucker. Hina too fucking busy for this. She was starting to feel a tension headache coming on. 

After this time - this _one, last time_ - she was going to put a stop to all of it. The man was thirty-four, for gods sakes! This was not her job! How many times had she promised herself to stop going through this madness!? She needed sleep. She felt like shit. She felt sixteen again. Fuck it. 

The only reason she was helping Smoker out now, Hina told herself, was because this was her mess too. Hina had been the only one who wasn't surprised when Smoker ditched his staid executive officer for a dangerously-unstable young Sergeant-Major, all but given the finger to Headquarters, and started tearing his way down the Grandline. This was _exactly_ the kind of thing that one could expect to happen when Smoker was left unoccupied and unattended for long periods of time. Hina should have warned someone. She should have seen it coming. 

_*Ring*_

Right. FINE. 

"Hina speaking," Hina said, holding the receiver as if it were covered in bilge and twice as distasteful. 

"Captain Hina? Um, I'm, uh, sorry if I've caught you and Captain Smoker at a bad time, ma'am. It's Lieutenant Tashigi. I'm in, uh, kind of a fix here, and if you're really not too occupied I was hoping that..."

"Lieutenant!? Where the hell have you been!!?" Hina demanded, surprised. "Smoker's been..." Hmm. Hina needed to phrase this without directly stating that Smoker had been disappointed, or worried sick. The girl had spent the last few months under the White Hunter's tutelage, and was now quite possibly more fluent in Smokerspeak than regular human modes of expression. Hina did not want to confuse the poor thing. Especially if she needed to be convinced to return to duty. 

"Smoker does not appreciate his officers disappearing without leave. And neither do I! There are important Marine matters to attend to today. I realize that you may be having some troubles with your CO, but you need to get back here right away."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't think that that's possible."

"... what do you mean?"

"I'm kind of, uh, no longer in Albasta."

"... what do you MEAN?"

The usually upbeat young Lieutenant sounded very small, "I fell through a magic door."

"A.... magic door?" 

"A magic door, ma'am. Really. That's the honest truth. Please don't be angry. Is Captain Smoker very upset? I tried to call him first but I guess he's not in his office. I thought he'd maybe be, um, with you, since the men said that you were together before I left. Is it that he doesn't want to talk to me? I'll understand if he doesn't want me to be his XO anymore, after all of these embarrassments I keep putting him through. I know that I failed to uphold his standards in Alubarna, and that this whole thing must be really inconvenient for him and it's all my fault for being too stupid and clumsy to get back to the ship from a walk in one piece. But you have to believe me - I didn't do this just to skip out on your ceremony, ma'am. Please don't discharge me! I really take my duties seriously and I would never..."

"I know, I know," Hina sighed around her cigarette, sinking into her desk. "You tripped and fell through a magic door."

"You... believe me?" 

"I believe you," Hina groaned imperceptibly. Lovely. Just what she needed - their witness filing a complaint with Headquarters. "Now tell me the whole story from the beginning."

Gods. She'd had such high hopes, too. 

Now, in order to make her ceremony a success, there was no choice but to resort to the alternative.

***

To know men was to distrust men, and Tashigi knew men very well. 

The male of the species thought in pathways and patterns that Tashigi could not even begin to navigate. They lied. They fought. They cheated. They stole. And for all years that she had spent in the company of males, Tashigi still could not fathom _why_. They never saw the beauty in combat - all they could appreciate in her weapons were their capacity for bloodshed. All they wanted was power that they could abuse. There had to be a reason that ninety-nine percent of pirates were men - some fundamental defect of maleness which Tashigi had yet to discover. Men did bad things, because they were bigger than women, and because they could. It was so stupid and senseless and... male! 

Working in Loguetown had been a valuable experience. Pirates and their hunters gathered were drawn to the city like sharks to blood. The criminal connections there were deep, and strong, and enduring - even Captain Smoker could not wipe out the memory of Gold Roger. In Loguetown Tashigi had seen it all, and then some. 

And she had worked for men, with men, and against men, for almost half of her life. So she knew for a fact that men were capable of _anything_. 

Forgetting that led only to pain and humiliation. Roronoa Zoro had reminded her of that. Every man had his own inner Roronoa, lying in wait under the surface for the opportunity to run wild. 

(Except for Marines like Captain Smoker, obviously. He was too strong for that.) 

"Here, dearie. It's got a little tessaroot in it - that should help you refresh yourself a bit. Would you like a cookie?"

"Thank you," Tashigi munched happily on a thin brown biscuit. The Mayor was so nice! She's been really hungry, and these treats were delicious. Tashigi wondered if the lady baked them herself. Neither Tashigi nor her mother had ever even attempted to be good at baking, so she really appreciated good sweets. She wondered if these were maybe the kinds of things that grandmothers did. 

"I do hope you don't think too harshly of our poor hospitality. We don't have very few people to impress out here. Only you and Captain Bell. We really have to be careful of him - I'm sure you understand. "

"Oh, not at all!" Tashigi washed the sweet down with a gulp of tea. This Captain Bell must be the local base Captain. Things were going so well! Talking to Captain Hina had really taken a load off of her shoulders. She knew now that she wasn't crazy, and that she also wasn't kicked out of the Marines, and that Captain Hina would take care of Captain Smoker for her until she got back. Relief washed over her like a wave. A powdery-sweet, chewy-chocolate, blood-warm wave...

Tashigi blinked once, and then twice, and then fell drugged onto the table. 

Tashigi had spent enough time around men to know not to trust them. But she had almost no experience of women. 

***

Smoker pulled himself together outside of Hina's office door - not emotionally (Smoker was by no means that much of a pansy), but physically. After hours of trying to discorporealize himself, he felt tall and strong and solid - good enough to take on the world. Which was a good thing. It was about time that he acted like a man and laid down the law! Smoker hunted whom he chose, when he chose, and Hina was going to have to either respect that or stay the hell out of his way. 

Smoker took an invigorating lung full of smoke - it had long since become a two-cigar day. Then he flung open the door, not giving a shit about manners or Hina's privacy. If he couldn't beat the shit out of something then fighting with Hina was the next best thing. 

"Good. You're here. I've been waiting for you," Hina gestured impatiently towards the chair he'd sat in during their poker game the previous night. She looked, infuriatingly, like a duchess about to hold court. "We have final preparations to discuss."

Smoker stared. All thoughts of having a good, revitalizing screaming match with Hina vanished. 

Hina rolled her eyes, "I suppose it was expecting too much to think that you'd get into your dress uniform on your own? Please tell me that I'm not going to have to personally shove the sleeves on your arms. I know that you know how to button up a shirt, Smoker! If I wanted to help people get dressed I would have spawned years ago."

Smoker continued staring. His XO was standing behind Hina's thronelike office chair, all dressed up in her good uniform and waving happily. 

"Tashigi?" Smoker was startled. Then he remembered to be angry. "Where the HELL have..."

"SMOKER-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!! IT IS SO GOOD TO SEE YOU!!!!!!!!!" Tashigi shrieked girlishly, and then launched herself across Hina's desk. Smoker didn't even have time to settle into a good scowl. Before he knew it he was being attacked by a bouncing, giggling squinty-eyed THING which seemed to be intent on hugging him to death. He was also fairly sure that it had just felt up his ass, which he found disturbing. 

Smoker unceremoniously pushed Tashigi to the other side of the room. Through no fault of her own, she fell into a bookcase.

"OW!"

"Hina," Smoker's mood had reached a low burn. "Who did this to my junior officer, and when can I kill them?"

"Calm down, Smoker, " Hina snorted. "_Clearly_ that's not Tashigi. I presume that you've atleast read enough of my briefings to have heard of Mr. Bon Clay?"

***

Author's Note: I love me some Bon Clay. 

Tashigi REALLY loves her some katanas. Which is part of the reason Hina calls her dangerously unstable. 

I hate writing setup chapters. That's why it took me so long to get done with this. Fortunately, the chapter of pain is over now, and I can move on to stuff I actually want to expend effort on. 

Extra ffnet note: I know that I said that SMoker was 32 in a previous chapter. I was wrong! Smoker is t34, and Hina is 32. Oops? 

P.S. Nik gave me inspiration pictures, because she ROCKS. Thankyou, Nik! 

Next Up: Action chapter! Tashigi vs. Captain Clarion Bell, Smoker vs. shirts, and more. In both Nanohana and Devil's Garden, it's finally time for the shit to hit the fan. 

Tashigi REALLY loves her some katanas. Which is part of the reason Hina calls her dangerously unstable. 

I hate writing setup chapters. That's why it took me so long to get done with this. Fortunately, the chapter of pain is over now, and I can move on to stuff I actually want to expend effort on. 

P.S. Nik gave me inspirational pictures, because she ROCKS. Thank you, Nik! 

Next Up: Action chapter! Tashigi vs. Captain Clarion Bell, Smoker vs. shirts, and more. In both Nanohana and Devil's Garden, it's finally time for the shit to hit the fan. 


	6. Clear as Bell

**Stronger 06 - Clear as Bell**

Tashigi dreamt of flying. 

She didn't want to, but she couldn't help it. 

Tashigi dreamt of verdant cliffs, and a cool white mist, and the great black-feathered wings that would bear her above the fog and into the vast blue of clarity. A powerful breeze surged around her. She felt unfamiliar muscles tense with strength.

The sun reflected in the water shone like justice. She was going. It was waiting, up there, in the blue. All she had to do was step off of the edge, and...

She had no loft, no luft, no pinions. 

Black wings belong to penguins. 

There were rocks on the shoreline. And when she fell, she was screaming.

If Tashigi were to remember her dreams, then she'd be obligated to feel guilty about having them. Daydreaming was for layabouts who shouldn't be allowed on the Blue in waterwings, let alone on a battleship. Night-dreaming was for sailors who didn't work hard enough to earn their rum rations. 

... that meant that she really must stop sleeping before her subconscious conjured up anything more worthwhile than a cliched nightmare about falling. Like, say, a dream about Roronoa Zoro all sweaty and disheveled and chained up in the brig and begging for his life. Or a dream about first-generation katanas. Or a dream about Roronoa Zoro chained up in the brig, while Tashigi taunted his miserable unarmed self with first-generation katanas. The last thing she needed was a dream that she'd want to remember. 

"Urgh," Tashigi blinked herself awake, trying to figure out why she would have gone to bed with cotton balls in her mouth. The last evening was a waterlogged, possibly hallucinatory blur. Entering the magic door to a hot, wet paradise? ... Her alcohol-addled consciousness must have manufactured a strange vision, in order to shelter her from the cruel reality of having to deal with such an atrocious come-on. 

Uurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggh.

Was this what a hangover was like? That figured. This was the penalty that she must pay for being so irresponsible as to go carousing with civilian in potentially hostile territory. It was amazing that Captain Smoker was able to stay so sharp after his own nights on leave. 

But then, Captain Smoker was tougher than she was. Captain Smoker never dropped a bunch of swords on himself, or accidentally exploded a fruit stand. And when Captain Smoker got drunk, he got to fall asleep in his office, instead of passing out in a filthy shack. Tashigi wasn't sure if that was because of her horrible luck, or because Captain Smoker was twice her size and could hold five times the liquor. 

Er... not that Tashigi was the kind of person that went around testing out how much liquor she could hold. Usually. 

"What on earth was I thinking?" Tashigi mumbled, wincing. Hopefully talking would clear the cobwebs out from under her tongue.

There was a strange, sickly-sweet aftertaste in her mouth - an off-putting combination of chocolate, chili, and rancid ginger. Weren't hangovers supposed to be more headachy, and less joints-on-firey? 

"... and what on earth was I drinking?" 

She squinted intently at a drab grey-brown wall. The noonday sun filtered through stormclouds cast a sickly yellow pall over the room. The whole place looked hazy. Its lone window looked to have been shattered from the outside in, and she could feel a clammy fog creep through it to nip at her nose. Was her vision impaired or were her glasses just really really filthy? At least she still had her glasses, as well as other essential clothing accessories. This ordeal could have been much worse. She could have passed out on a hard wooden floor in a filthy shack... with the bartender. 

Tashigi stood, muttered a few not-quite-curses to herself, and began to stagger towards the door. 

Then she lost her balance, lurched backwards, and landed right back on her ass. Which HURT. 

Tashigi stood back up again. 

Okay, this was getting ridiculous. Her balance was not that bad. Usually there was at least some (lame) excuse for her to fall. Things like... a wave rocking the ship's deck, or a really slippery nail in the floorboards, or something shiny and distracting in the background, or exhaustion from a fight. Incredibly stupid reasons for having accidents were still reasons, damn it! People didn't just up and start tripping for no purpose at all! That would be completely unfair. Tashigi refused to believe it. 

So what could have thrown her off? Surely not the pain - she'd had far worse aches from her falls and her training. Those didn't usually affect her. Tashigi felt too strange to still be drunk. Was this time to panic? Was that what she should be doing? Panicking? Because she could panic if that was called for. That was the sort of thing that even Marines did, when they discovered that they had been doped up on shady substances. Yes. Tashigi was all about the panicking. If there had been a panicking drill at boot camp, then she would have been at the top of her class. It was only right that she employ this valuable skill in her time of need. 

"I'm ... a lush! A horrible, irresponsible lush," Tashigi moaned dejectedly. She had gone AWOL from her ship, in order to indulge in possibly-illegal substances! How had she sunk so low? What would Captain Smoker think? Would the men still respect... A DRUNKARD? 

The universe was punishing her for her disgraceful overindulgence, there was no doubt about it. 

Tashigi fought off hyperventilation, and reached reflexively reached for the solid-steel comfort of Shigure at her hip, but. 

She grasped only air. 

Tashigi's eyes widened. Now she knew what had thrown her balance off. She'd been compensating for a weight that wasn't there. The thought that it might be gone hadn't even crossed her mind... she was so careful to keep Shigure with her. Especially here, in a place full of thieves and malcontents. The vagabonds of the Grandline would have to tear her Shigure out of her cold dead fingers before she'd let them misuse it.

But she was still alive.

She was still alive. 

Her way, her means, means and her end were gone. And she was still alive. 

Why was she still... 

Tashigi fell to her knees. 

For once, it wasn't by accident. 

***

"No."

"Smoker... just put on the goddamn shirt."

"NO."

"What are you, five?"

"The jacket closes. A shirt would be irrelevant. I'm fine."

"Fine for what... commanding a rusted-out trawler!?! I will not have the people of Albasta thinking that Marines conduct themselves like half-naked, boozing privateers! The only Marine who does that is you."

Sigh. 

This wasn't at all how Bon had pictured signing his soul over to the angels. 

Really, he was quite put out. 

"I am not drunk. Nor am I Shanks. How many times do we need to go over this, woman?"

"Don't you take that tone with me!!!" 

Why must these uncultured people lack any sense of dramatic pacing? Couldn't they act like properly menacing authority figures and give him something to feel persecuted and melodramatic about? Bon was a swan princess, dammit, not some chorus boy in a tree suit! 

"I'll talk however I damn well please."

"Not while you're on my flagship, you won't. Do you hear me? Hina not fucking around!"

"... no, I guess not."

"If that was a comment about my sex life, then you are SO far over the line that..."

"Please. I was only agreeing that you weren't messing around. You always blow things out of proportion."

Bon was pretty! Bon was delicate! Bon was impersonating their uncouth waif! Bon was the dramatic twist, the heroine, and the shocking revelation all rolled into one. 

... so why wasn't anyone looooooking at him? 

It wasn't like there was anything else even remotely worth looking at in the office. The Marine furniture was mind-numbingly butch, Bon's female captor was a shrieking harridan who probably had split ends, and Smoker-chan's abs were currently covered by that confounded jacket. 

"The only thing out of proportion in this cabin is the amount of hot air."

"So you're saying that I'm full of hot air? Hunh. That's the giant squid calling the shark wet."

"I'm not saying that you're full of hot air. I'm saying that you ARE hot air - which would explain a lot what happened to your brain. Wrongheadedness as spectacular as yours can't be natural. Only a Devil Fruit could cause it. It's only a shirt, Smoker. A shirt!"

"This is not about a shirt. It's about PRINCIPLE. I may be Headquarters' publicity stunt, but I refuse to be Headquarters' bitch. I guess that a locked-up-tightass like you wouldn't understand that."

Surely they could find it within their hearts to treat Bon's tragic situation with at least a little dramatic weight. Bon was as flexible on he dance floor as he was on the dancers. He could prance the pliets of tragedy just as well as the pirouettes of adventure, and he could play the vulnerable slaveboy just as well as he could play the domineering captain. Bon was a born queen of drama. They had kept him imprisoned in their grimy brig for days, shutting his light away from the world... and now he was ready to shine. 

Except none of these tacky Marines seemed to care!

Why, if Bon thought about it much harder, he'd be liable to give himself wrinkles. And goodness knew that all of this time in such dreadful salt air without his seaweed pack must be doing unspeakable things to his complexion already. The shackles were certainly chafing his wrists. And the iron identification collar that Hina had materialized around his neck was extremely gauche.

"You are such a jackass... just put on the goddamn shirt."

"No. We do this, we do it on my terms. You may like that... getup... but they get a photographic record of me in some damn monkeysuit over my smoking corpse."

"That can be arranged, you know."

"A Marine isn't a Marine without his pride."

"How does walking around shirtless give you less dignity?"

"REAL Marines don't..."

Oh, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH. Was that all these people ever did? It was no wonder that there were so many pirates on the Grandline. 

"I don't believe this. I do so much for you - the Devil knows why - and you can't budge one fucking inch to accommodate my agenda. Not even to help yourself!"

"You've done nothing but nag at me since I got here! ... I never asked for your help."

"No, I guess you didn't. You get into trouble so much that you've gotten used to me automatically assisting you. But I stopped needing your help the day we graduated, didn't I, Smoker? I wonder what that says about you? Maybe it says that you're still frigging nineteen!"

Honestly. Another, lesser shapechanging pirate ballerina might have been rendered senseless by the indignity of it all. 

Bon resolved to change the situation. He was free! He was fetching! He was fabulous! And between the epaulets, the gender-swapping, the renewed make-up privileges, and the personal restraints, he was feeling deliciously kinky. Bon was on top of the world! There was nothing that he couldn't do. Not so long as he had ... THE OKAMA WAY! 

Bon cleared his throat, and the yelling stopped. The Marines seemed annoyed to have had their rhythm broken. Perhaps they'd been on some kind of roll.

"Well, I think you look edible just the way you are, Smoker-chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!" Bon leered cheerfully. "Hina-chan! Stop being such a stick-in-the-mud! How can you be sad with such a juuuuuuicy cut of manflesh about? He's practically lickable."

Smoker-chan looked (tastily) aghast. These homophobic jarheads were sooooooooooooo predictable. No matter how many macho phallic substitutes they clutched, Okama wiles always had them completely outgunned. 

"Hn," Smoker-chan went all stonefaced (he was the strong-and-silent-studmuffin type,) before wrenching a white shirt out of Hina's hands. "Fine."

Hina mouthed Bon a silent thank-you. 

Their reactions weren't particularly awe-inspiring, but Bon would take what he could get. It would do until he could make a change of venue. If this little display was any indicator of Marine competence, Bon would be out of there by sundown. 

***

If there was anything that Clarion Bell hated, it was waiting. Time was money. Time was life. Seconds that he spent sitting in his office doing nothing were seconds that he could never get back again. There were only so many years in a person's life, and he'd already wasted twenty-two of them doing stupid things like being born and growing up and going to school and apprenticing as an abalone merchant and NOT being a pirate. 

How was he supposed to become an Armed Sea before he died, at this rate? Was it too late already!? Had time already passed him by? That Monkey they'd just issued a huge bounty on was still a minor... and his barely-older brother the Burning Fist was already Whitebeard's second-in-command. How was Clarion supposed to compete with that sort of drive, efficiency, and work ethic? Damn that rubber-limbed prodigy! Damn his equally-successful sibling! They made Clarion feel old and incompetent. If only he'd realized that he wanted to be a great businessman pirate sooner, when he was ten or eleven... then he might have had a chance at competing. 

Alas, he'd spent too many years reading about piracy and not enough making his dreams come true. Every second was precious, if he were going to catch up. He had to work harder to become stronger, or be left in the dust! 

Which was why he hated waiting. Especially on someone like Jack, for whom being on time for meetings was as easy as walking through the nearest doorway. Clarion had tried to pass the time by reading a fascinating treatise on the effect of black-market blubber trafficking upon the whaling clans of the West Blue, but could not manage to distract himself. 

He took to throwing daggers at a dartboard instead. The least he could do was improve his hand-eye coordination during this period of forced inactivity. He hoped that his skills weren't degenerating. Ever since his ship had run aground on this stupid island, Clarion hadn't been able to practice throwing things accurately while the floor moved beneath him. He missed the waves. 

He missed the feeling of moving forward. 

"Captain Bell?" a timid voice interrupted Clarion's practice. His greeting was cut off by the thunk of steel in corkboard. 

"Jack," Clarion wasn't going to bother turning to look at Jack. Minions waited on Captains, not the other way around. 

"I, um, have some news, about the Albasta deal," Jack continued, hat-in-hand. Well, okay, Jack didn't actually have a hat. And if he did wear hats, Clarion wouldn't have known if it were in Jack's hand or not, because Clarion wasn't looking at him. But his tone was the tone of a man who should have a hat in his hand, even if the requisite materials were not available. That was good enough for Captain Bell. 

"So talk," Clarion threw another knife. His knives were starting to form a pattern on the board. It was shaped like a J. "You've wasted enough of my time today."

"Well, y'see... the product I was sent to deliver... I mean, by now you must know how Crocodile's operation went sour...."

"Does your babbling have a point, or am I going to have to give it one?" Clarion contemplated the last knife left in his belt. It was polished, so that he could see Jack's face in mirrored surface of the blade. Clarion made sure to take good care of his things. 

"Er, yes. As I was saying, Crocodile's operation went sour. And, uh, y'see, our old buyer sort of got put in prison, because of all the Marines in Albasta right now that are, um, kind of putting alot of people in prison, on account of they're Marines and all. So, yeah. And, see, what with all the Marines being there... hey, did I mention that they were big, SCARY-ass Marines? Like, that Smoker guy from East Blue was there, and that motherfucker would put his own grandma in handcuffs if she looked at him the wrong way."

Clarion felt that this was as good a time to throw his knife as any. Except that this time, he decided to spare his poor corkbord, and tossed it over his shoulder so that it embedded itself in the wall right behind Jack's head. 

"Jack."

"Right. Anyway. I'm trying to sell the Devil Fruit to someone else, because our buyer's in jail. When suddenly, I'm attacked! By this huge swordswoman - the one that took down Mr. One himself! I tell you, Captain, this chick was like a fucking tank. Arms like treetrunks. A total butch, I'm telling you. She might as well have been Smoker in drag. I was powerless to stop her! And she saw the Devil Fruit... and.... I mean.... "

Now, Clarion felt the need to turn around. 

"A MARINE took my Devil Fruit?"

"It's just one loss!" Jack said, unwisely. "Once the villagers find another Devil Fruit on the ocean floor, it'll be no problem. They wouldn't dare use it on themselves."

"Devaluing my market share is no problem? Setting back my schedule is NO PROBLEM!??!"

Oh, this was very MUCH a problem. Jack might be lackadaisical with his appearance... but Clarion had never imagined that he would treat his work with the same carelessness! 

"It'll be easy for you to make the profit back. Just send out the minions, get some new product, and we'll have a new deal in no time. Like I said: it's no big deal. As long as you have me, and the divers, you're golden."

How was he supposed to finance the construction of a new flagship, if his product was being stolen by shemale Marines? He had to get off of this forsaken rock before his career shriveled up and died of old age! Was all his work for nothing!? 

"Do you think that this is EASY, Jack? Do you think that I was BORN a pirate Captain? Nothing about this operation is easy!" 

"N-no Captain Bell! Of course not."

"Every day, Jack! Every day I train!" Clarion pulled himself into an intimidating pose, his greatcoat swirling around him like a dark cloud of menace. "I work hard all the time, to make money to buy a NICE new flagship for my pirate crew. All I ask is that YOU take a stroll every few weeks to deliver a package for me. Is that too much to ask, Jack? Do you think that you're too valuable for me to kill - that I'm some lazy person mooching off of your Devil Fruit power? Because I assure you, that's not the case. Running a pirate crew requires careful training and planning. No matter how useful your power is, THERE IS NO 'I' IN CREW."

The greatcoat reared outwards in anger. Jack quailed. 

Clarion was particularly proud of his greatcoat. There would be no flash-in-the-pan pirate gaudiness for him! His greatcoat was a coat which was truly destined for greatness. It was woven of black wool as fine as spider-silk - a sultry-soft blend that swirled and slithered with his every move. It clung to his snake-hips, as pliable as a newly-shed skin. Its brushed-silver buttons gleamed with an unearthly inner light. Its double-breasted front cut across his chest with a ruthless geometric strength. 

Future generations of greatcoat-wearers would speak of it in awed and reverent whispers, and invoke its legend in ages of fashion disaster. 

... and that, naturally, was the whole point. Clarion's pirate syndicate was not going to be any old half-assed operation, running around Blue and Line following sketchy rumors about loot like a chicken with its head cut off. Noooo siree. If he was going to become a despicable outlaw, then he was damn well going to do it right. That meant careful planning and following the right procedures (like buying really nice flagships when your old ones ran aground on islands.) Too many foolish quests and ill-conceived crew themes doomed the glorious institution of piracy to ridicule. 

Clarion spared a moment to mourn for the corruption of his (dis)-honourable calling. 

"Are you okay in that getup? You look flushed..." Jack rolled up his sleeves, and tried to change the subject. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. 

"Nobody asked you," Clarion glared, straightening his lapels with a sharp jerk. He would not allow his standards and practices to degenerate! ... Not even if he felt like he was locked in a pressure cooker. He could ignore the heat. He had to try harder to become more ruthless! 

"Now. I don't care if Hina herself has shackled it to a fifty-foot sword-weilding giantess that breathes fire. You're going to go get my Devil Fruit. Or?"

Jack said nothing. 

In the spirit of ruthlessness, Clarion pulled a small whistle out of his greatcoat's velvet-lined left pocket. Jack looked alarmed - far moreso than when Clarion had been playing with his daggers. 

"Or?" Clarion prompted, brandishing the whistle threateningly. 

"You'll kill the whole village, and find some Mermen to do your dirty work," Jack recited. 

"Primary industry, Jack. It's not dirty work. It's primary industry. They are the primary resource-acquisition end of this business, and you are the tertiary service-oriented sales and delivery end of this business. How am I supposed to vertically integrate this operation if you're not going to read my memos?" 

"Nobody reads your memos," Jack grumbled. 

"Don't sulk, Jack. You brought this on yourself. It's not my fault that you brokered a deal with me, and it's also not my fault that you care if I downsize those villagers. You knew that you'd have to pay your debt up when we made our transaction. And until you reimburse me, you READ my memos, or I start demolishing houses. Is that clear? Because I can show you the contract, if you like."

Clarion felt the need for a change of scenery. He picked up his spare belt of knives, swept past his angry-looking subordinate, and walked out onto his wrecked ship's deck. Too many asses like Jack considered criminality an excuse for lax business practices and general lollygagging. The power went to their heads. Where had the professionalism gone, the sense of crew solidarity!? What was wrong with pirates these days? How could Jack let him down like this?!

"I have an appointment with the Mayor and her divers. I suggest that you be gone to find my Devil Fruit by the time you get back."

***

Sunlight filtered through dull grey clouds, casting the village in a sickly yellow glow. The ocean below the boardwalk had lost its lustre. The air had grown thick and humid with impending doom. It looked as though the world had somehow managed to contract jaundice; as if some crucial force of nature had stopped filtering toxins out of the atmosphere. The Grandline was showing its true colors. Justice had left for friendlier waters. Nothing was ever right here.

Or maybe, it was just that something wasn't right with her. Tashigi had never been able to trust her body. Her eyes were weak and her muscles unruly. There was no reason to think that she was seeing things at all properly.

Tashigi marched towards the shoreline, single-mindedly. All her mental resources were consumed with NOT thinking about Shigure. One boot fell in front of the other, one breath followed the last, and she was walking somewhere, to do something, which would probably involve a lot of violence, either to herself or to others. It was better than huddling up in a corner and doing nothing. 

"Is anyone out here?" Tashigi said, to no one in particular. The place was deserted. A ghost of a town, for the ghost of herself.

This wasn't Albasta, so maybe last night she hadn't been seeing things. At this point, Tashigi didn't really care. 

"COME OUT!" she shrieked. "COME OUT AND FIGHT, YOU COWARDS!" 

She was still alive. Unarmed, and still alive. 

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?" 

Something warm and solid knocked the breath out of Tashigi, and sent her sprawling on the docks. Apparently, they had been waiting to tackled her from behind. She'd expect an attack like that, from a sword-stealing coward. Roronoa had probably stolen the Wadou from its rightful owner, as well. When he'd gone to buy swords in that shop, he hadn't had any funds to speak of. There was no way that he could pay for a blade as beautiful as the Wadou, and he was too base of a person to belong to some venerable dojo-running family like her father's. Yes. That must be it. He'd STOLEN it. Him, or perhaps that thieving tart he associated with. Roronoa was too debased to do his own dirty work. 

Now she would die at the hands of a swordthief like Roronoa. She couldn't decide whether that was unjust or poetic - mostly because she was currently struggling to breathe. 

"Hey, are you okay, miss?" the young men pulled her up into a sitting position, from where she'd been pushed onto the boards. Tashigi felt her elbows sting, where the impact had skinned them.

"Sorry about that," he whispered furtively. "You were making so much noise... and the Captain's due out here today. The Mayor said you weren't supposed to be awake for another hour or two, so that was why we didn't have anyone there with you when you came to. Everyone else is out at the diving beach right now. If we don't find a Devil Fruit for the Captain by the time he gets down here, there'll be big trouble."

His hand, on her shoulder, was conciliatory. Tashigi shrugged it away. 

"Shi... gure..." she hacked. 

"Hunh?" he pulled her to her feet. "Look, we have to get you back inside... the Captain can't know that we've been harboring a Marine!"

With one hand, Tashigi unclasped the empty scabbard from her belt. With the other, she jabbed it back into the man's gut. He gasped and clutched his belly. Tashigi took the opportunity to jump to her feet, and take up a martial stance. The scabbard was the same size as her Shigure, sans handle. She could use it well enough as a makeshift bokken, against an inexperienced person like this. 

"My sword. Shigure. Where is it," Tashigi loomed, pondering whether or not to kick the man while he was down. Caution ruled in the affirmative. 

"A sword... are you crazy!?!" the man gagged, from where he'd curled into a fetal position. "Going around attacking people who are trying to help you... what's your problem? The Mayor confiscated your stupid sword, to give to the Captain. And you should thank her for it! Only a moron would bring a sword here. If the Captain found you with a weapon he'd kill you! It's better that you get back to your ship and grab some backup, Marine. You can't take Bell on your own even with a sword, believe me."

"I want it back," Tashigi remained unmoved. With Shigure on her mind, everything else was peripheral. 

Roronoa Zoro took on a hundred bounty hunters by himself at Whiskey Peak. She would not be overshadowed by him... even if she had the option to call for backup, which she suspected that she did not. Tashigi hadn't been drunk at all, had she? That old woman... she'd done something... something to... 

She'd preferred it when this whole thing was a hallucination. 

"It's for your own protection!" the man spat. 

"I don't need your protection." 

Whether she died or not was none of their concern. She was a Marine. They were civilians. 

Tashigi pulled the man up by the hair. It was conveniently long, and made him look like a girl. Smoker would have cut it off with a machete. Her troops would have beat the crap out of him. Who was Tashigi to buck a violent trend? 

"Take me to the Mayor," Tashigi breathed. "You will. You will take me to the Mayor. Right now. I will not allow the obstruction of justice."

***

Author's note: Chapters are appearing more slowly 'cause I'm in school now. So yeah. 

I know I promised some Vivi this chapter, and I didn't deliver. Just set my pants on fire and call me Usopp. Introducing Bell took up more text space than I thought it would. I think I'm going to have to hack what was supposed to be one part into two or three sections. That's why this bit has so little plot. 

I know that dream sequences are excessively cheezy. I just couldn't resist the penguin image. ... sorry? I tried to make it as short and painless as possible. 

I'm also not a big fan of using fangirl Japanese in English fics, unless absolutely necessary. I consider Bon's "-chan"to be absolutely necessary. It's a dialogue quirk that can't really be replicated in English, the way that (for example) "Mr." can be substituted for "-san." 

Next up: Tashigi breaks down, Bon Clay nearly breaks out, and Hina is tempted to break Smoker's face


	7. Breaker

**Stronger**  
07 - Breaker

"You shouldn't bruise. Much." 

Tashigi helped the villager she'd injured to his feet. She felt guilty for lashing out like that. She probably ought to be more apologetic. But Tashigi was very tired of playing games of faults and apologies, snakes and ladders. And there were a lot of things that she ought to be, yet wasn't. 

"I'm very sor.. um, never mind. Are you going to be able to take me to the Mayor, or will you have to call someone else to guide me? I don't think I've broken anything of yours, but you should tell me if you are unable to help me. There's no use in my pushing you farther than you can manage," Tashigi babbled. "I could take you back to one of those huts to lie down."

The man stepped back, warily. 

"I can take you," he winced and started walking, apparently expecting her to follow. "You don't have to hurt anyone else. So don't."

"I don't intend to hurt anyone else, unless they break the law," Tashigi cringed. "Thank you for your help. I... understand that you thought you were doing the right thing, even though you were misguided."

Just before they hit the beach, Tashigi grabbed a sturdy-looking broom from the doorstep of a nearby shack, and broke it in half across her knee. She let the thatched part drop, so that she could give the top section a few experimental swings as she walked. It was almost as good as a bokken. Anything was better than using her scabbard. The scabbard, like Tashigi, was as good as useless without her sword.

Shigure made her a soldier, made her a swordsperson, made her _someone_. Now there was only the hollow place where her confidence had been. 

She had memorized its edges, could still feel it indented into her palms, was able to imagine it glinting at the edges of her perception... 

That would have to be enough. She was doing the best she could to cope with this. 

"What are you doing?" Tashigi's guide asked, as she twirled her way through a perfunctory training set. 

He sounded nervous. Did he think that he was a hostage? Did _she_ think that he was a hostage? Tashigi was against hostage-taking on principle, but sword thieves didn't deserve to be treated with the kind of basic courtesy that she reserved for petty criminals. Except he might not be a sword thief - he might just be a citizen who'd gotten caught up in a bad situation. Oh, why the hell did this have to be so difficult? Most pirates were considerate (or foolish) enough to make themselves easily identifiable for Marines, with their vulgar language and outlandish garb. They weren't supposed to look like regular people. It was as duplicitous and dishonorable as a Marine running around out of uniform! 

Tashigi pondered her demi-hostage's question, for a second, before responding.

"I'm pretending."

Could she even _do_ this? Tashigi'd never imagined being this sort of Marine before - the kind of bullying, hostage-taking Marine that she hated. But then, Tashigi hadn't been doing so hot at being the kind of Marine that she wanted to be, either. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe it was a message. Like she should stop trying, because she'd never be... 

Tashigi brought her makeshift weapon down sharply, a hair's breadth away from striking the tip of her hostage's nose. 

"You're pretending... to smash my face in?" 

"No," said Tashigi. "Just plain pretending."

Maybe that was all she'd ever done. 

***

The tent that they were keeping him in was hardly his dressing room, but for Bon all that was secondary. He could hear the crowds outside, cheering almost loud enough to drown out the music. The ceremony had begun, the warm-up act had taken to the streets, and all of Nanohana was waiting for their star to make an entrance. They were waiting for THEM - the diva Bon Clay and his delicious leading man, dashing Marine Captain Smoker-chaaaaaaan!

Oh, if only he were not trapped in this ridiculous female body! Then they could appreciate his true fabulousness! The tragedy of it all was almost enough to make Bon weep; but no, he would manfully soldier on. 

"Your Lieutenant must have really liked swords, if she wore one even on formal occasions," Bon leered at the dull practice blade they expected him to carry, utterly clueless as to how this was supposed to compliment his ensemble. Butch and dashing, this woman was not. "A woman after my own heart."

"Don't talk about Tashigi's swords like that, you freak!" hissed the Sergeant that had been assigned to watch over him. Bon was puzzled; why wasn't the man making jokes about swords being like phallic symbols? Even a captain with Bon Clay's delicate constitution knew that nearly forty percent of sailor conversation was composed of dirty jokes. 

(Alas, what Bon could not have known was that, on the good ship Enforcer, making jokes about swords standing in for phalluses was likely to lead to unpleasant sword/phallus interactions of a far less symbolic nature. At the very least, it guarantee dishwashing duty for all of eternity. Rumor had it that some newbie private once made a comment about Tashigi being "awfully eager to handle Roronoa Zoro's mighty blade." Tashigi ordered him to lick the D-deck showers clean with his tongue until he was no longer a "filthy male chauvinist pig fit only to eat slop." And she kept him down there UNTIL HIS TONGUE WORE OFF.)

"But we're suppoooooosed to be talking about her, Marine-chan! Someone has to help me get into character!" Bon's said huffily. "I, Captain Bon Clay, will never give a substandard drag impersonation, no matter what style-impaired buffoon I am impersonating. That would be against The Okama Way!!!"

"Would you shut up about that? Captain Smoker will be along any second, and then you can go get your medals, and then all this will be over. Fullbody and Jango's interpretive dance reenactment of the Battle of Alubarna is almost done."

"... did you say,_ interpretive dance_?" Bon shook with outrage. There were OKAMA in the MARINES!? Those cretins! How dare those wannabe Okamas sell out, and betray their artistic pride! This performance was a crime against everything that Bon stood for. Bon could not - WOULD NOT - forgive anyone who dared taint the Okama Way with military propaganda! Dance was meant to express the fiery passion within a virile pirate heart, not to service the cold, soulless Marine agenda of that pink-haired hag. At least Bon was acting under duress, rather than voluntarily submitting to indignity like those Marine Okama louts. 

"H-hey! Clay! Captain Smoker's not here yet. Where the hell do you think you're going?" the Sergeant demanded. 

Bon treated the annoying lunk to a quick boot to the head, before stomping off to find the limelight. His balance was a bit off in this body, but that wasn't about to stop him. He'd show these amateurs exactly who was the REAL prima donna of the Grandline! Poor Smoker-chan. Bon hoped that he wouldn't be too disappointed if the ballerina began his performance a little early. Art must always come before pleasure, you understand. 

***

Tashigi and her guide walked for a good half an hour before they reached another complex-looking set of docks. The journey was pretty pleasant, since they stuck to the shoreline. Tashigi got the impression that her demi-hostage was more afraid of the forest than he was afraid of her. That should probably make her feel less like a complete bastard for threatening him. 

It didn't.

"Hello," a voice greeted her from the center of a knot of burly-looking fishermen. The crowd parted, and Tashigi locked eyes with their leader, and elderly woman decked out large lilac shawl. 

Alright, now she didn't feel so much like a bastard after all. This was the woman who had poisoned Tashigi and taken her Shigure! 

"What sort of Mayor are you, thief?!" Before she'd looked solid and comforting, but now Tashigi could see that the woman was was as rough and sharp as stone. What kind of village allowed itself to be led by a sneak and a felon? 

The group of fishermen - there must have been a couple dozen, at least - were giving Tashigi suspicious looks. She didn't know if that was because the Mayor had told them to expect Tashigi, or because her guide was still limping. 

"What have you done to Hans?" said the Mayor. "My dear, that's very poor way to repay us for our hospitality. I dare say I'm disappointed. If you've crippled him, and he can't serve any longer, that could be his death sentence."

"I haven't crippled anyone!" Tashigi protested. That... that... that was completely unfair! She was sorry, even if she hadn't come out and said it! She was! This deceitful criminal was trying to get her all worked up over a few bumps and bruises. "I am a Marine, and I don't accept hospitality from thieves. Plus, I hardly think that drugging me qualifies as hospitality." 

The sky had cleared from ash grey, into a brilliant blue. It could be so pretty out here, on the sea. Tashigi couldn't understand how such rotten people could come from such beautiful surroundings. 

"Hospitality was not turning you over to _him_ the minute I saw you! He'll be very angry if he finds we've been harboring a Marine. What will you accept, to leave and get all of us out of danger? I can't give you much in the way of a bribe, but..."

A bribe? 

For once, Tashigi could live with that, because what she had in mind wasn't really a bribe. It was a reclamation. 

"Fine. Give me my sword, Shigure."

"Ask for something else," the old woman's vioce took on a worred edge. "That's the one thing I can't give you."

Tashigi noted that some of the fishermen were picking up large poles... the better to hit her with? 

"Yes you can. You don't seem evil... you were so kind to me. People like you don't attack Marines. What are you afraid of? Your people don't need to arm themselves." 

Tashigi was puzzled. 

"There's a pirate here," the Mayor said. 

Tashigi was _still_ puzzled. 

"So give me my Shigure."

Shouldn't they be happy to see a Marine, with pirates around? 

"We used to dive for shellfish," the elderly Mayor explained. "Now, we dive for Devil Fruit so that he can sell them."

Oh. The pirate must be the boss of the man who got her stuck here. Good! Now she could find a way back to Nanohana, and also bring an illegal industry to its deserved end. This might be a way to redeem herself in the eyes of Captain Smoker! She needed her sword; there was work to be done. 

"So _give_ me my _Shigure_," Tashigi ground out, frustrated. 

"If we eat them, he kills us. There's nothing we can do."

That old woman sounded so sad - so resigned. Couldn't she see that she'd been handed an opportunity? 

"_So give me my Shigure_! I'll help you!"

"You can't defeat him. You don't know what you're asking for! You're young and hopeful, but believe-you-me... there's no slaying the devil's brood. Especially when..." the old lady paused, uncomfortable. Her hut had smelled like gingerbread and cotton. Tashigi could tell that she didn't want to say anything impolite, even though she found Tashigi ridiculous. Tashigi appreciated that. If the Mayor could not express herself, then Tashigi would have to do it for her. 

"No. It's okay," Tashigi smiled softly. Now she understood. "You can think what you will. I know what I look like. I don't expect you to be polite. I'm short and skinny. I'm not intimidating and I don't see too well. I've been weak." 

They paused for a short, uncomfortable silence. 

"I've been weak for a very long time..." Tashigi said, half to herself. She raised her bokken, and steeled herself to attack the villagers. This... this .. this wasn't her, damn it. It wasn't her at all. She was better than this. 

But those pirates were the ones who dispensed Justice in Alubarna, while Tashigi watched uselessly from the sidelines. They must have been doing something right, while she was doing something wrong.

Some of the burlier villagers moved to the front of the circle of people surrounding her. They'd fall hard. Their movement held far more strength than technique, and strength without technique was about as useful as a katana without a handle.

"I can't say how sorry I am that I'm the Marine you're stuck with. Someone like my commanding officer would be able to help you without breaking a sweat. I'm all technique and no brawn and there's nothing I can do about it," Tashigi said. She wasn't sure who she was talking to. "That's why I've been such a failure. Ordinary people underestimated me because of my size and my gender, so I got into the habit of overestimating myself. But I was never on the level of a real swordsperson, and I don't have the strength to accomplish any of my goals. I learned that from a... a very skilled person, recently."

Another non-fight with Roronoa Zoro would probably get her killed, too. He'd tire of her chasing him, and slaughter her, no matter what ex-girlfriend of his she looked like. 

Roronoa was right not to respect her. Only those who ran wild thrived on the Grandline. Idealists like Tashigi ended up like those poor Albastan rebels - deluded and eating dust. How must that rebel leader have felt, when pirates traipsed in to his country and accomplished in weeks what all his years of patriotism and deprivation could not? What must it be like to owe your home and happiness to criminals? Had the Straw Hat pirates taken pity on him, as Roronoa took pity on her? 

Probably. Those pirates were unimaginably cruel. 

"That's why you need to return my sword. I'll fight my hardest for you; not only for Justice, but because I have nothing left to lose. If you give me Shigure, there's a chance that I could fail. But there's also a chance that I could free you! Please, you must believe me!"

The Mayor wouldn't look her in the eye, " ... enough. Remove this woman, before the Captain __hears of this!"

One of the large fishermen broke ranks and charged her. Tashigi evaded his punch with a neat sidestep, and her bokken repaid him with a sharp rap behind the kneecaps. The man collapsed like a house of cards. 

"If you don't believe me, that's okay too. I'll still help you. I've decided to be stronger."

***

Just when Smoker thought that this ceremony could not possibly any more humiliating, Hina's crew sunk the whole operation to brand new levels of stupidity. He wasn't sure what pissed him off more: the fact that _Marines_ were _dancing in the streets_, the fact that their dance was reenacting whatever bullshit story Headquarters had come up with to explain the defeat of Crocodile, or the fact that HE was being played by that snot-nosed prettyboy Fullbright, or Fullbottom, or whatever the hell the guy's name was. 

Smoker wondered how much money they'd spent to make those sparkly costumes. That cash probably would have bought a shitload of ammo. He might even have been able to buy a rail gun off of Hina for the ship. 

The cheering throng lining the streets wasn't helping his mood. Smoker wasn't sure if they were cheering for him, or for Crocodile's fall, or for Vivi Nefertari, who was enthroned on a fancy podium Hina'd had constructed in the town square. He hoped that this was for the Once and Future Princess. She would appreciate it more than Smoker did. She looked thrilled to be up there, playing politician. 

"This is pissing me off," Smoker gestured angrily at the dancing, from his vantage-point on the balcony that was Hina's operations center and his so-called place of honour. Smoker could have waited in a tent like Clay, until it was time to get his award, but Hina refused to set up another tent and Smoker didn't have any tents of his own. He suspected that Hina was making him watch this as some kind of private joke. He'd forgotten how much that bitch got off on busting his balls. 

"Is it? I had no idea. Hina enlightened."

That sarcasm was uncalled for. Ball-busting _bitch_. 

"They did a good job finding a dancer who looks like Tashigi for the pantomime, don't you think? And the boys from the Wayfarer really outdid themselves putting together that brass band." Hina said sweetly, lighting up a cigarette. That was also uncalled for. She knew that he'd left his cigars in his regular jacket. Was this revenge for the fight they'd had before? Women made no goddamn sense. 

"I wouldn't know," Smoker stiffened. 

"Sure you do. Don't play dumb to indulge your macho pride, Smoker. You used to like music, when we spent that one semester hanging out at the Cow and Rooster. And whoever that dancer is, he looks almost exactly like her. Hina impressed." 

"Whatever you say."

"Cigarette?"

"NO." Smoker refused to sink that low. Hina knew damn well how ridiculous a man like him looked smoking some tiny cigarette - almost like he was sucking on a lollipop. 

Dancing Crocodile had just broken out into what looked like a seizure, but was proably just some artsy crap that Smoker was relieved not to understand. Hina was too damn easy on these pansies; that was why they pulled shit like this. 

"Do you remember being idealistic like her, when we were younger?" Hina asked. 

"Hell no," Smoker snorted. 

"Yeah, me neither. But you were still pretty hard on her," Hina pressed. "You shouldn't attack her for having principles, just because you're disorderly and disreputable. When she called, the girl sounded scared half to death that you'd have her keelhauled." 

"I'm aware of what people think of me."

Of course Tashigi was scared of him. He was her CO. That was the natural order of things. What the hell point was Hina trying to make? Wasn't it enough that he was putting up with this charade? This was why Smoker never bothered with women long-term. They always wanted to _change_ him. Well fuck that! If Hina thought she could mess with him when they weren't even sleeping together, she was in for a rude goddamn awakening. Smoker had his pride.

... although, that dancer did look a lot like Tashigi. A _lot _like Tashigi. Or at least a lot like a lot like Tashigi would look, if Tashigi could actually stand on one foot without tipping over.

Wait a minute. 

"Hina, that Tashigi dancer's got Clay's collar on. What the_ fuck_?"

"Shit! You're right. I knew that something like this would happen," Hina hissed. "Although, the crowd's loving it."

"Fuck the crowd!"

"There are thousands of people out there, Smoker. I doubt you'd have the stamina."

What a _special_ day this was. He'd know from the start that this ceremony was a terrible idea. Fake-Tashigi was twirling and whirling her way to an escape! With a crowd like this it wouldn't matter if Clay had an ID collar on. There was no way they'd find him if...

Smoker shrugged off his dress coat. It was too long, and it impaired his mobility. 

"Would you stop bitching and moaning? We've got to do something!"

"Chain 'Tashigi' down in full view of half of Nanohana? Are you insane!?" Hina grabbed his arm before he could march off of the balcony. Her fingernails cut into his bicep. "No one will mind if 'she' doesn't collect her award. It looks like it's part of the show. Besides, he won't get far. Not with my men ringing the island, to keep the remaining Baroque Works agents from escaping. I... I thought that something like this might happen. They'll all be looking out for that iron collar."

"I don't CARE what you've done, or what it looks like. He's getting away!" Smoker tried to pull out of her grip. Damn, but the woman _was_ a cage. "A pirate escapes custody on my watch when HELL freezes over!"

How could she have let this happen, when she'd anticipated Clay's escape from the start?

"I'm trying to help you!" Was she... pleading with him? No, that couldn't be right. Pleading wasn't Hina's style. "Why must we keep having this talk, over and over?! Couldn't you listen to me, for once in your goddamn life? If you make a wrong move now your reputation for lawlessness will only get worse. That was why we needed to fake Tashigi being here. Everything had to look legit, or else they'd have the half-excuse they need to send special forces after you. Recapturing Bon Clay won't do any good if the Admirals decide you need to be court-martialed for disobeying orders! It doesn't matter if one pirate goes free, so long as you stick around to put a dozen more behind bars. Can't you see that? You know what cons think of Marines! If they send you to jail, the pirates in there will tear you apart!"

She sounded really worried. Smoker hated that. Hina should never sound that worried, ever. It wasn't right. Hina was a tough old bird, a ball-busting bitch, and Smoker... Smoker wan't listening to this. She needed to stop it.

"Give your speech to someone who gives a shit!" Smoker roared. He couldn't look her in the eye. 

Hina's expression became flat, cold, and calculating. A small part of Smoker relaxed, a little. 

"Don't make me lock you up. Again."

"You wouldn't dare," Smoker's eyes widened imperceptibly. 

:"Try me." Hina wouldn't back down an inch, even when he shot her his fiercest glare. 

"I'd pass right through."

"Through a solid iron box? Hina skeptical."

Did their friendship mean so little to her, that she'd choose Headquarters over him? Over hunting down a criminal? 

Smoker guessed so. Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. They weren't kids anymore. 

"You can't make a solid iron box. You couldn't in school, you couldn't when you locked me up in my office, and you sure as hell can't now. And even if you could, you wouldn't be fast enough on the draw to put me in there."

"TRY ME."

...

Fuck. Clay'd probably vanished in to the city by now. Hina's fake concern and banter must have been stall tactics. 

"You're not my fucking nursemaid, Hina."

"You sure about that? With the childish way you're acting, I wasn't so sure."

She let him go. He didn't move. 

They stood in hostile silence until it was Smoker's turn to play nice for the cameras. He walked up to the podium, and received a gold medal from some damn fool princess who probably had no idea what people had gone through to save Daddy's country. Come to think of it, one of those pirates had looked an awful lot like her. Smoker chose not to dwell on that. 

He could melt the medal down later, and maybe do something useful with it. A couple of his men needed fillings. 

*** 

Step and lunge and slash and turn and these fisherman were not even a match for the privates that she trained and it seemed so easy. But it wasn't. It never was. Tashigi had to fight her treacherous body for control of every move she made. It didn't want to work the right way. It had no sense of balance. It liked to fail and falter and fall. It didn't want to hit as hard as a man's body could, or dodge as fast, or jump as high. But no matter what anyone else might say about her clumsiness, Tashigi's body was not in command of this operation. This was a matter of willpower, not construction. Tashigi would not accept defeat! 

"Young lady, you need to stop this! Do you hear me? If you attract his attention you'll bring his anger down on all of us! That's why I... I threw your sword into the sea."

"STOP LYING!" Tashigi barked. 

Tashigi spun her bokken, and heard a man's jaw crack. 

Another fisherman took a swing at her. She deflected his blow, and he stumbled. Tashigi had to be careful not to fall over any of the unconscious bodies surrounding her. She was breathing heavily, seething with anger, and the only way that this was ending was with Shigure in her hands.

Nobody expected anyone to be good out here. That might be why the people were so bad; they didn't have any standards to live up to. But was it too much to ask that _someone_, _somewhere_ give her a frigging _break_? That someone watch her back, or help her up, or take her out for a drink, or tell her she wasn't hopeless? Captain Smoker had Captain Hina and even those wretched Straw Hat pirates had each other but she had no one_, ever_, because even though _they_ were freaks Tashigi was a swords_woman_, and therefore an even _bigger_ freak and what had she done to deserve that? Not even people that should back her up for their _own frigging good _could be bothered to support her! 

Why weren't these people cooperating!? She was always very careful to be _polite_ so that people would _listen_ to her. That was what people were supposed to _do_, when you asked things _nicely!_

"You don't want to make me do something we'll all regret!" Tashigi bellowed. 

Tashigi shook the hair out of her eyes. She was breathing more heavily than she'd like. She tried _so hard_ to be a _good person_ and stop criminals but nothing ever went _right _and nothing was ever _fair_ and now even the citizens she tried to protect were _sabotaging_ her and it made her soANGRY that she didn't know what to do, didn't know what to do with all that rage except grip her bokken tighter and _CHARGE_... 

"GIVE ME MY..."

Suddenly, all thoughts of violence were driven from Tashigi's head with an impossibly loud, high-pitched ringing sound. The Marine dropped her bokken and sunk to her knees, hands clutched over her ears. 

Then the noise stopped, and she looked up. 

A well-dressed young man carrying a small silver bell was standing over her. The bell that had been ringing. But small silver bells didn't ring like that, so. 

Devil's Fruit. 

Oh, well _this _was typical. Admirals forbid that something positive happen in this godforsaken blue! 

... Unless this was a good person. She shouldn't judge. She knew that she'd be angry if someone judged Captain Smoker on his power alone. 

"Hey," the man smiled gently. "You alright?"

... her head hurt. 

"W-what was that noise?" Tashigi massaged her aching temple. Her body had taken a lot of abuse over the past few days. She hoped that this wasn't some kind of concussion. Tashigi had never heard anything like that before. It had been like this pressure, at the back of her brain, ringing and throbbing until she couldn't do anything but hope that her skull wouldn't crack open like an egg under the stress. It was frightening. 

"I amplify sound. It's sort of appropriate," the man shrugged. He was dark, a little older than her, and a lot well-off. Tashigi wondered if he was local nobility. Some of them were misguided enough to eat Devil's Fruit to show off at parties, or whatever it was that rich people did with their time. "I'm sorry - I should have introduced myself. My name's Captain Clarion Bell. That's why the power's appropriate. Funny how things work out that way, hunh?"

"Oh, I don't know. You'd be surprised how often things like that happen," Tashigi said, wryly, thinking of the reports she'd read about Bon Clay's malleable form. Tashigi didn't actually know if Captain Smoker's given name was Smoker or not. She certainly wasn't about to go and _ask _him. "I'm Sergea... er, Lieutenant Tashigi. East Blue Marines." 

"Yes, I know. I got a report about the commotion from a loyal villager," Bell crouched down to talk, so that he was relatively level with her. "You did a pretty good job of working that lot over. When they told me that a Marine was here, I expected an addled sailor who'd run off-course. I had no idea that I'd actually find a competent professional thug." 

Say_ what _now? 

"I'm not a thug!" Tashigi yelped. This was the first polite person she'd encountered on the island, other than that kid, and she wasn't going to let his crew get a bad impression of her too. Hopefully her ears would stop ringing soon and she could explain herself properly. The noise made it hard to think. "This isn't what it looks like! They took something that belonged to me. I wanted it back, that's all. I never meant for it to come to this."

.. although she hadn't minded too much when things came to blows, had she? A part of her had been very, very pleased when they attacked her; the part that said they got what they deserved. 

"Captain! We disarmed her - don't punish us for disloyalty!" the Mayor interrupted, stuttering, from where she'd curled into a fetal position on the edge of the dock. Hunh. Tashigi had forgotten about that thief. 

"Did I say that you could talk?" Bell snapped. 

The Mayor whimpered. 

Bell turned his attention back to Tashigi. 

"Please excuse my employee's rudeness. She stole something of yours? That's so typical of these bumpkins. " 

Maybe the guy was a noble after all. He might be a bit stuck up, but at least he was more sensible that the madpeople in this village. It was unfair to be prejudiced against noble people, even if they often did very silly things. 

The ostrich feather in the Captain's cap bobbed wistfully as he shook his head.

"I assure you, my crew isn't nearly so shoddy. If _we_ stole from you, you wouldn't live to try and take it back."

...

Oh NO... 

"...you.. you're the _pirate_? The one that these villagers are afraid of!?"

Wait, that couldn't be right. Pirates were unreasonable on principle. The citizens attacking her, and a pirate coming to her aid? Ridiculous! This... this must be some kind of pirate ruse! Perhaps there'd been a mistake, or her anger was still clouding her vision. Perhaps, between the sound and the drugs, there was something wrong with her brain. A true pirate would wear a _much_ more ridiculous outfit than this person. Couldn't the man be a friendly trader, or a tugboat captain? 

Tugboat captains didn't own coats that nice. 

Tashigi should probably seriously consider standing up soon. There was now a pirate to fight, and all. It was just that her eardrums still felt as though they might burst, and her balance wasn't very good at even the best of times. 

"You probably haven't heard of my pirate crew, but we're working on that," Pirate Captain Bell took Tashigi's hand, and pulled her to her feet. Good. The fighting could begin then, um, once she found her makeshift bokken. Hopefully it hadn't fallen into the sea. Tashigi wasn't sure that swimming would be a very good idea with the state that her head was in. Granted, it would be hard to beat someone with that sound power even with the bokken, let alone swim, but she had to start somewhere.

"You wouldn't happen to be looking for a position, would you? It's sad that your Marine crew abandoned you here," Bell grinned conspiratorially. "Started taking bribes, hunh? Or maybe filching from the stores? Running illegal boxing matches below-decks? That's solid business. Too bad you got caught. The Marines run on such an outdated corporate model; it completely discourages individual commercial initiative."

Tashigi just stared. 

"What?" Bell asked. 

Tashigi stared some more. 

"No, seriously, what?" Bell looked deeply alarmed. "There... there's not something on my _coat_, is there?" 

Staring was still a reasonable reaction. 

"I can offer you a five percent take of net booty, and a better weapon than a stick. I can guarantee you that that's at least two percent more booty than you'd be making with Johnny Sawlegs two islands down."

Then Tashigi blinked. 

"You want me to join a _pirate crew_!?" Tashigi squeaked. Outrageous! What kind of person did this shady character think she was? Well, alright, he must think that she was the kind of person who ran around abusing villagers, which she supposed was a pretty pirate-like thing to do, but there were extenuating circumstances in play! He had no right to go around slandering her like that! 

"Are you _insane_!!?"

"Ah, I see you're skeptical about my standards and practices. That's understandable. You're probably used to Marine discipline, and I admit, I _have_ let the indentured labourers in this village run a little roughshod. Look, I know that layabouts like Shanks give us pirates a bad name, but you should be more openminded if you're trying to break in to the thug industry. I'll have you know that I have an excellent work ethic!" said Bell, preening his black greatcoat. "I read all the latest in military and management theory. I even use a series of color-coded charts to effectively schedule crew activites and training."

There were no words that Tashigi could have said, which would have been so eloquent as her stunned silence.

"So what do you say? Are you in?" 

The pirate captain pulled a knife from his coat, and started to throw it up in the air and catch it. What unsubtle posturing. Captain Smoker was much better at it. 

How could this horrible pirate suggest that she join his crew?! Marines stood for Justice! She couldn't let these villagers get an even worse impression of what Marines were like, than the one they must already have. They might lose more of their faith in the rule of law, and steal from more innocent people! The very thought of it made her feel sick. Besides, there was no way that she could ever behave in such a disgraceful manner. 

...Was there?

One of the men that she'd incapacitated twitched on the docks. It seemed to her that these villagers had lost their faith in the rule of law a long time ago. How were they any different from the pirates that oppressed them? 

Tashigi was so confused. 

She could never taint Shigure, but Shigure wasn't there, and there was no way that she could beat this Devil Fruit user unless she joined him. 

Who was a failure like her, who let pirates dispense her justice, to pretend that she was special enough to remain morally pure? 

Was this was Captain Smoker meant, when he told her to get stronger? Had he been telling her to swallow her pride and... and... learn to be like those _pirates_ were? 

_Are you saying that what happened in Alubarna wasn't the justice you wanted?_

Tashigi had no right to demand any justice that she could not enforce with her own two hands. 

_You have to get stronger!_

_Recently, many people that I once respected have gone rogue here, gaining wealth and infamy. They know that running wild is the way to survive. _

_There's only one thing to do in a place like this. Go forward or die. _

She was always the one who minded when the citizens of Roguetown called Captain Smoker a monster. 

Captain Smoker hadn't cared at all. 

_Why are you crying, Tashigi!?_

_Weren't **you** the one who decided to come here in the first place?_

"Yes. I will join your pirate crew."

***

Author's Note: Yeah, I didn't think I'd write more of this either. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're trying to avoid working on a boring term paper. I'm all inspired now. 

A few days ago I realized that, as far as we know, Tashigi has her mentor but NO nakama to support her. And in a series like this that's sad. Poor Tashigi. It's no wonder that she has so many self-esteem issues.

Either the ending of this fic will make sense to you, based on previous characterization, or you'll think I should be horribly eviscerated for OOCness by the Fanfiction Marines. I have it on good beta-reading authority (thank you, Tiamat) that the former is more likely than the latter, but I worry a bit. Either way, um, I hoped that you enjoyed it?

The italicized bits of Smoker's speech are paraphrased from a translation. So. I'm not sure if they're particularly accurate, but they DO reflect the gist of what happened. I hope. 

Next Chapter: Hina + Smoker - Bon. An abridged version of what I was going to write in Young Soul Rebels, but never did. 


End file.
